David Farbey (poster)
Structured Authoring rides again:
what is DITA and why is it important?
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) has emerged over the last few years as a new standard for managing and developing technical content. Originally developed by IBM, DITA is now managed by OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) a not-for-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society.
Information typing is at the heart of DITA. This means that each unit of information is classified as either a Task or a Concept or a Reference, and that this classification determines the topic content. For example, a Task topic can contain procedural steps, while a concept or a Reference topic cannot. A key principle of DITA is specialization, which means that new information types can be created from the basic types and that these new types automatically inherit the processing rules of the basic types.
From an author's point of view, using DITA to produce standardised units of information facilitates content re-use and so brings the goal of "single-sourcing" (writing once and publishing many times in multiple formats) that much closer. There are difficulties too, as using DITA forces writers to stop thinking about books and chapters, and instead to think in terms of smaller chunks or topics. DITA also turns back the clock on the WYSYWIG world of desktop publishing, by separating content development from presentation, just as you would expect from a mark-up language.
David Farbey is a freelance technical communications and information design consultant and has worked in the field for the last 15 years in a wide range of sectors and industries. He is an Associate Lecturer in Technical Communications at Sheffield Hallam University, and has taught courses on professional writing at Coventry University. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators, a Senior Member of the Society for Technical Communication, and a Member of the British Computer Society.
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