DITA Tips for Translation

State of DITA:
What is happening with DITA at the
OASIS DITA Technical Committee and beyond

Don R. Day

Presentation for opening meeting, DITA Consortium Japan, March 2009

Agenda

Background

The DITA TC Charter

Current issues

The DITA Roadmap

A bit of DITA History

Key trait to keep in mind: ML stands for Markup Language

1980s: GML BookMaster is IBMs first markup language

1994: SGML IBMIDDoc introduced to replace GML Bookmaster

1999: XML Workgroup initiated to explore how the then-new XML standard should fit into IBMs publishing future

2001: first version of DITA was published on developerWorks; first internal pilots started

2002: DITA introduced IDWB for beta use

2003: DITA formally first released in IDWB, rollout in ID begins

2004: IBM contributed the DITA specification to OASIS

and the rest is history.

DITA at OASIS

What is OASIS?

Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Systems

Began as XML Open, ostensibly to balance the trend towards de facto standards

Oriented towards support of standards for Vertical Industries

Was the home of DocBook and ODF standards at the time we were looking for a standards home for DITA

Besides the DITA/DocBook/ODF content group, OASIS also hosts a wide variety of XML markup usage:Adoption Services, Computing Mgmt, Document-Centric,

e-Commerce, Law & Government, Localisation,

Security, SOA Standards Adoption, Supply Chain,

Web Services, XML Processing

The OASIS DITA Technical Committee charter

The purpose of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee (TC) is to define and maintain the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and to promote the use of the architecture for creating standard information types and domain-specific markup vocabularies.

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita/charter.php

Who are the players?

TC Member characterization:Users/implementers

Tools vendors

Consultants

Translation community

Governments, academics, interested parties

Audience (from the charter):Writers of other specifications that could benefit from DITAs specialization model or other aspects of its architecture;

Vendors offering XML authoring or development products;

XML architects and developers who design and write XML applications;

Information developers and information architects

Current Scope

Subcommittees:DITA Translation Subcommittee

DITA Learning and Training Content Specialization Subcommittee

DITA Machine Industry Specialization Subcommittee

DITA Semiconductor Information Design Subcommittee

DITA for Enterprise Business Documents Subcommittee

DITA Help Subcommittee

DITA for Technical Standards Subcommittee

Current Scope, continued

Community supportOASIS DITA Adoption TCBest Practices and whitepapers

OASIS DITA Focus Area: http://dita.xml.org

Local DITA User Groups

Conferences and Workshops

Defining behaviors for implementers (for example, the DITA Open Toolkit reference implementation)

Demonstrating interoperability with other standards

The DITA Roadmap

OASIS DITA 1.0 (approved May 2005):

DITA 1.0 is the formalization of the DITA DTDs and Schemas contributed by IBM to OASIS in 2004.

The goal of development through the 1.x series of releases is to add function while maintaining backwards compatibility with previous 1.x releases. The DITA TC has collected and prioritized a number of requirements based on known shortcomings, user requests, and relationship with other standards and industry trends.

Starting with DITA 1.1, backwards-compatible updates will be released peridically.

Backwards-compatible bug fixes will be released from time to time as Candidate Releases keyed to just-previous approved standards. The last such release was DITA 1.0.1 in the fall of 2005.

Roadmap, continued

OASIS DITA 1.1 (approved August, 2007):

Two major themes: Book deliverablesConverged metadata within the bookmap

Booklist function for generating collections of content

Transitional text in the bookmap

Indexing (See, See Also; sort order; page range)

Image scaling expanded specification

Retrofits for improved translation handling

Data extensibility Extensible metadata attributes

Universality of universal attributes

element as archetype for structured metadata, content

element for foreign content vocabularies such as MathML and SVG

Roadmap, continued

OASIS DITA 1.2 (expected 2010) Documentation (Spec updates)

Architecture (improvements/reconciliations for content models, conref; introduce full keyref and implicit linking)

Elements/content models (introduce elements for content attributes, keyword nesting, revised section capabilities)

Attributes (minor tweaks)

Additional Book-related (ANSI warning labels, xNAL address domain)

Specializations (glossary entry and definition)

Roadmap, continued

OASIS DITA 1.3: next version in the 1.x family of the Standard

OASIS DITA 2.0: opportunity to revisit the core architectureExpected to break the backwards compatibility promise of DITA 1.x

Compliance with other XML standards and practices that have become commonplace during the DITA 1.x lifecycle

DITA in Real World use

Beyond ID within IBM

DITA Wiki project:Main community of programming teams needing a way to document APIs, messages, helps, to hand over to ID

Additional use for project documentation and team docs

Good for developing standards and workgroup materials

IBM Microelectronics Design Manual projectDescribes fab facility capabilities; enables better job scheduling

Has a Design Rules specialization for formalized data packets

System Requirements

Global Promotions and Announcements

Client Self Assist (in prototype)

Other industry examples:

Learning and Training contentBIG uptakeStandard support in Adobe FrameMaker 9

Featured in seminars by JustSystems and others

Machine Industry (elevator manufacturers, for example)

Research In Motion (Blackberry)

Cisco, Citrix, VMware, Xerox

Freescale

Dassault Systmes SolidWorks Corporation

These are just examples from an upcoming conference!

Summary

Listening to users, engaging vendors, and building community

Encouraging specialization activities (new topic types, domains)

Book-oriented major update for DITA 1.1 this summer

Continued work against existing list for 1.2 through this year

Continued focus on innovation and interoperability

Resources

OASIS DITA Technical Committee home page:http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita/

DITA Roadmap:http://wiki.oasis-open.org/dita-adoption/Dita12changes

DITA Focus Area:http://dita.xml.org

DITA Technology Report (a Cover Page bibliography):http://xml.coverpages.org/dita.html

DITA Open Toolkit:http://dita-ot.sourceforge.net

IBM User TechnologiesDITA Advocates: State of DITA 2001, 2009 IBM Corporation

IBM User Technologies | February 2009 2009 IBM Corporation