The Adoption and The Adoption and Evolution of the OASIS Evolution of the OASIS DITA StandardDITA Standard

OASIS Adoption Forum, London

18th October 2005Ian Larner (IBM) & Indi Liepa (DITA TC/Nokia)

www.oasis-open.org

Contents The road to a standard The value of DITA Uptake of the standard Plans for the evolution of the

standard

Contents The road to a standard The value of DITA Uptake of the standard Plans for the evolution of the

standard

Identify the need – Customer issues

Solutions, not products Integration of information

Information glut More meaningful information (role & task based)

Out-of-date information in books Updating and maintaining information

Reduce cost of deployment of information Provide information on-line

Reduce support costs Customize and update information

History of Markup - structured information

1970s:ISIL

1980s:BookMaster

IPF

1990s:SGML, HTML

2000+XML-based semantics

Need for Change

Printed Books

Limited reuseSingle purpose

Printed and onlineBooks, online help

Monolithic Book-Centered DTD

Shorter cyclesFewer people,

Decreasing learning curves, Faster, better, cheaper

Components,Multiplatform,

Integrated systems

Web-deployed products Partner and OEM use of

information

Online information,Webs, printable &

Printed books

Information Architecture

Why DITA? Structured information based on XML. Provides for greater

consistency and interchange of content Topic-orientation. Self-contained topics combine with other

topics into information sets Adds semantic tagging & meaning to the information

Vocabulary domains provide sets of elements whose names and content models are unique to an organization or field of knowledgeCan combine elements from any number of domains

Support of personalization through rich, extensible metadata Reuse of content, design, and process allows integration

across information spaces. Becomes a platform for collaboration and interchange – share across groups, companies

Support of conditional processing, automatic linking and link checking, and a “hands-off” reuse model

Support incremental specialization of design, processing, and vocabulary domains

Darwin Information Typing Architecture

topic

concept task reference

topic

concept task reference

Darwin: DITA utilizes principles of inheritance for specialization similar to OO programming

Information Typing: DITA was designed for technical information based on information architecture types of Concept, Task and Reference

Architecture: DITA is based on XML and supports extending design and processes through inheritance and specialization

Eclipse help

JavaHelp

HTMLHelp

Web pagesBooks & PDFs

Learning

Write BuildArchitect

Information Architecture

Map

BuildMaps

Topics Outputs

Eclipse help

JavaHelp

HTMLHelp

Web pagesBooks & PDFs

Learning

Write BuildArchitect

Information Architecture

Map

BuildMaps

Topics Outputs

Write BuildArchitect

Information Architecture

Map

BuildMaps

Topics Outputs

Goal-orientedBusinessScenario

Non-DITA information

OpenDocument

OASIS standards

Other standards

Other …

Map

topic

title

prolog

metadata

related-links

body

topic

title

prolog

metadata

related-links

body

task

title

prolog

metadata

taskbody

prereq

context

steps

taskxmp

result

postreq

step

cmd, (info | substeps | tutorialinfo | xmp | choices)*, result?

related-links

task

title

prolog

metadata

taskbody

prereq

context

steps

example

result

postreq

step

cmd, (info | substeps | tutorialinfo | stepxmp| choices|choicetable)*, stepresult?

related-links

topic

title

prolog

metadata

related-links

body

topic

title

prolog

metadata

related-links

body

topic

title

prolog

metadata

related-links

body

topic

title

prolog

metadata

related-links

body

task

title

prolog

metadata

taskbody

prereq

context

steps

taskxmp

result

postreq

step

cmd, (info | substeps | tutorialinfo | xmp | choices)*, result?

related-links

task

title

prolog

metadata

taskbody

prereq

context

steps

example

result

postreq

step

cmd, (info | substeps | tutorialinfo | stepxmp| choices|choicetable)*, stepresult?

related-links

Declares more precise semantics Enforces more constrained

content models Makes the content easier to

understand, author, edit, validate, and process

General topic

<topic id="installstorage">

<title>Installing a hard drive</title>

<body>

<ol>

<li><ph>Unscrew the cover.</ph>

<itemgroup>The drive bay...</itemgroup>

</li>

<li><ph>Insert the drive...</ph>

<itemgroup>If you feel...</itemgroup>

</step>

</ol>

</body>

</topic>

Specialized task

<task id="installstorage">

<title>Installing a hard drive</title>

<taskbody>

<steps>

<step><cmd>Unscrew the cover.</cmd>

<stepresult>The drive...</stepresult>

</step>

<step><cmd>Insert the drive...</cmd>

<info>If you feel resistance...</info>

</step>

</steps>

</taskbody>

</task>

Key feature - specialization - extension by substitution

DITA as an OASIS standard DITA 1.0 specification is an OASIS standard

XML tool vendors (Arbortext, Blast Radius, Idiom, Rascal, Syntext)

Consultants (Comtech, Innodata, Mulberrytech) Companies (BMC, Boeing, IBM, Intel, Lucent,

Oracle, Nokia, Sun) Organizations (National Library of Medicine, US

Department of Defense) DITA Technical Committee working now on 1.1

requirementsOrganization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards

DITA Open Toolkit As Open Source on SourceForge

http://dita-ot.sourceforge.net Reference implementation - being

enhanced as a production system Developing vendor/contributor

relations for known build-out niches (FO, indexing, style interface, new outputs, etc.)

Users customize or extend the Toolkit

Contents The road to a standard The value of DITA Uptake of the standard Plans for the evolution of the

standard

Business value of DITA Faster time to value

create solution offering across industry stacks or within

your business with different components

Increased reuse of content by referencing topics in many map contexts of designs by providing only the specialized delta on the

general base of processing by overriding the base only where needed

Investment protection because of automated fallback to more general markup

Value of DITA Organizations and their OEMs can finally interoperate on the same

open-standard base Eliminating expensive and time-consuming conversions as part of the

business cycle for componentized products OASIS DITA and the DITA Open toolkit form a "Foundation for collaboration"

for everyone For organizations that need special vocabularies, DITA is a more

natural way to support those needs DITA provides default processing for new information models by default Producing and supporting new domains much cheaper and less risky than

"rolling your own" DTD and having to develop and support your own tools Everyone who embraces DITA helps to grow the already large

community that vendors have started to support Bringing in competition and variety in the tools that you can purchase for

authoring and producing DITA deliverables DITA is not limited to product information (help, Webs, …)

DITA is being used in other organizations within a company, wherever the model of topic-oriented information is applicable.

WebSphere Application Server 6.0 Information Center Content

Shared inCommon

80%

z/OS12%

Distributed8%

Shared 5% (69%)

Network 1.5%Base 1%

Express 0.5%

The Reality - Topic-level Content Reuse*http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r0/index.jsp

1. z/OS2. Distributed Shared

1. Express2. Base3. Network

R

*Based on work being done by S.Carpenter & D.Schell

Contents The road to a standard The value of DITA Uptake of the standard Plans for the evolution of the

standard

DITA uptake

Cross-industry and organization uptake (production or proof of concept exercises):

Software

Telecommunications

Engineering

Education

Automotive

Genealogy …

2400+ Open Toolkit downloads since March 2005

www.oasis-open.org

Examples of DITA application Technical user documentation for IBM software

products WebSphere, CICS …

Product creation process documentation in Nokia mobile phones

Service information, test cases, specifications, software documentation …

Software documentation and training at CEDROM-SNi implemented by IXIASOFT

www.oasis-open.org

DITA at IBM In use across IBM

100s of projects

100,000s of topics

Both new and converted from SGML or HTML

Translate DITA content into over 50 languages

Contents The road to a standard The value of DITA Uptake of the standard Ongoing evolution of the standard

DITA: A platform for collaboration

Retail

Medical Legal

Marketing

Technical

Core

Content markup that’s specific to the subject areaMarketing event announcements,

Development functional specifications, orReal estate appraisal forms

Shared markup modulesAcross industry segments or

communities and between partners

Local markup for the organizationAgree on the shared basics, diverge on

the local idiosyncrasies

DITA 1.1 – key new features being specified

Support for metadata element specialization Metadata attribute extension to support

specialization of attributes for filtering and flagging

Formalization of “book” DTD and processing Support for other XML vocabularies in topics Introduction of a more general task type Key-based referencing for referencing targets

based on context

DITA 1.1 – key enhancements being specified

Improved consistency of related topics references

Improved consistency of application of filtering and flagging attributes

Improved support for title reuse Enhancements to index processing Fixes to issues identified by community using 1.0

Where next? Learn more about DITA

OASIS – http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita XML.org cover pages – http://xml.coverpages.org/dita.html

Where do we take DITA together? Join the dialog on the DITA forum –

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/

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