ibm user technology | november 2005 | © 2001,2005 ibm corporation a short introduction to darwin...

IBM User Technology

| November 2005 | © 2001,2005 IBM Corporation

A Short Introduction to Darwin Information Typing Architecture: DITA

Michael PriestleyIBM®

IBM User Technologies

A Short Introduction to DITA | © 2001, 2005 IBM Corporation2

What’s ahead?What’s ahead?

History of DITA – Why was DITA developed?

Introduction to DITA – What is DITA?

Benefits of DITA – Why should you care?



Background: Why DITA?Background: Why DITA?



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Out-of-date information in books• Updating and maintaining information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



The Vision (1998/1999)

Single source

XML topic

1

XML topic

2

XML topic

3

XML topic

4

1

2

3

2

3

4

Multiple contexts

Information web A:

1, 2, 3

Print A:1, 2

Information web B:

2, 3, 4



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



“Open” DITA

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, Nokia, Sun)

• Organizations (National Library of Medicine, US Department of Defense)

• DITA Technical Committee working now on 1.1 requirements.

DITA-OT as Open Source on SourceForge• http://dita-ot.sourceforge.net

• Reference implementation - Will continue to be enhanced as a production system

• Developing vendor/contributor relations for known build-out niches (FO, indexing, style interface, new outputs, etc.)

Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards



What is DITA?What is DITA?



DITA defined

Darwin: DITA utilizes principles of inheritance for specialization

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

Architecture: DITA is a model for extension both of design and of processes



Core design principles of DITA Topic orientation

• Discrete units of information covering a specific subject with a specific intent

Topic granularity• Self-contained topics combine with other topics into

information sets Strong typing

• DTDs and schemas guarantee that DITA types follow identical information structures

Specialization• Architecture for extending basic types to new types adapted

for a particular use within an information set Common base class

• Top-level "generic" base type provides “fallback” for all types



The core DITA topic types – The “IT” in DITA

topic

concept task reference

Provides background information that users need to know.

Provides quick access to facts.Provides procedural details such as step-by-step instructions.

A unit of information which is meaningful when it stands alone.



DITA and reuseDITA and reuse



Promise and Reality of XML

Promise• Separate content from form: reuse content in different presentation

media

• Use specific markup to describe your content

• Use standard solution to enable easy exchange of information Reality – Generic XML

• Generic XML provides an SGML with simpler syntax but similar problems

• Generic solutions - not specific to needs

• Knowledge representation is strongly related to current corporate culture

Tradeoff• The more useful your markup is to you, the more it will cost you and

the fewer people will share the costs



Resolve tradeoffs through more efficient reuse

Reuse of content

Reuse of design

Reuse of processing



Reuse of content

Reuse flows from the topic-based paradigm

If content is authored as standalone topics

• Topics can be reused in different contexts

• Topics from multiple components can be integrated as a solution

Good writing enables reuse



Topics reused in deliverablesTopics reused in deliverablesTopic 1

Topic 4

Topic 2

Topic 3

ƒ Deliverables select topics from a poolƒ Deliverable 1 uses topics 1 and 4ƒ Deliverable 2 uses topics 2 and 4ƒ Neither deliverable uses topic 3



Working with DITA maps

A DITA map applies context to the topics

Organizes a set of topics into hierarchies, tables, and different kinds of groups (e.g. sequences, families, choices)

Sets properties of the topic at a position within the map

Eclipse help

JavaHelp

HTMLHelp

web pages

books

Eclipse help

JavaHelp

HTMLHelp

Web pagesBooks & PDFs

Learning

Write BuildArchitect


Map

BuildMaps

Topics Outputs

Eclipse help

JavaHelp

HTMLHelp

Web pagesBooks & PDFs

Learning



Map

BuildMaps

Topics Outputs



Map

BuildMaps

Topics Outputs



Reuse of design

General types are rarely enough• Requirements specific to organization or industry

Meet requirements with new elements• New element specializes existing element

• New content is a subset of base content

Add only the deltas - still use the base

Designs are modular• For instance, optional b and i highlighting



Specializing from Topic to Task

Small DTD additions to enforce document structure.

May have no CSS or XSL process changes.

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

topic

title

prolog

metadata

related-links

body

task

title

prolog

metadata

taskbody

prereq

context

steps

example

result

postreq

step

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

related-links



Specialization for DITA topic types

Topic

Concept Task

Tutorial

Java APIC++ API

Command Message

Reference

API

Eventannouncement

Insuranceclaim form

Use casespecification

or

or

or. . .

Use the right topic type for your content



Reuse of processes

Base processing in extensible XSLT

Standard processing can be customized• Override standard processing as needed

Processes for base elements apply to new specialized elements by default

• Can use base processing

• Can write custom processing if needed



Specialized processes handle the delta for specialized topic types

Basetopic

Task

Concept

Reference

bcTask

bcReference

Specialization-specific processors

Base processors

Base and delta DTDs Base and delta processors

Specialized processesSpecialized processes



Summary of reuse

Reuse content through topics

• Author content as standalone information

Reuse designs through specialization

• Meet requirements specific to organization

• Keep interoperability with others

Reuse processing

• Customize only as needed



Summary of problems solved

Development challenges met• Shorter development cycles

• Eliminate variability in HTML outputs

• Support componentization of products and need for reuse

Deliver solution information, not product information• 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



Summary of business value

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



The DITA vision: A platform for collaboration

Retail

Medical Legal

Marketing

Technical

Core

Content markup that’s specific to the subject area

Marketing 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

Install the specialization modules, assemble the document types, and go



Where next?

Learn more about DITA• OASIS – http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita

• 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/



Backup Slides



Value of DITA to content creators DITA is the foundation for collaboration for developing information.

• DITA allows product / component families to easily share content. This allows us to build solutions much more than we have every done before and much more quickly. Teams can pull information from across diverse products into a single output.

Teams can manage the integration of information by using DITA maps.• DITA maps pull together individual topics into an order. This allows different teams to pull

the same topic into different maps and to build a solution map, pulling topics from across components or products. This allows flexibility in combining and recombining information with maps and does not require authors to touch the original topics.

DITA provides authoring consistency.• Authoring consistency comes from strong information typing. Information typing also

facilitates reuse and integration across product teams.

DITA defines an architecture for extending and specializing its core information types, enabling rapid response to frequent industry changes. DITA enforces business process / architectures.

• New information types are extended as delta changes from a core type, greatly reducing the time and resource needed for development, testing, and deployment.

DITA supports personalization through a rich set of metadata.

DITA’s tag set is based on a core set of familiar HTML tags, making it easy to teach others and allowing new authors to get up to speed quickly.



Value of DITA to customers and users DITA organizes content into topic-based information units, with each topic

describing a single task, concept, or reference item. Because of this focus on topics, customers can:

• Update and replace single topics of information quickly as needed to support an on-demand environment.

• Receive increased consistency - a task is a task, a concept is a concept, and so on, and all follow a consistent and agreed-upon structure.

• Receive a quicker time to value -- the sharp focus on tasks that customers must do quickly brings the emphasis on specific core tasks, not requiring customers to wade through information.

There is an improved quality when information is written in DITA. • Authors can use analytic techniques to ensure that the information about new

features and functions is complete: each feature/function requires one or more tasks, one or more pieces of conceptual information, one or more pieces of reference information.

Customers can use DITA as a foundation on which to build their information; to also integrate their information with other information. DITA easily supports topic-oriented content for their internal training and education courses.



Value of DITA to business partners & content integrators

DITA enables a foundation both for interoperability with other DITA adopters and for extensibility to meet the requirements of their industry or organization.

Focused – allows 3rd parties to specialize with own information • Third-parties can easily customize or provide new content with standard tools.

Vendors can quickly integrate information about their products with other vendors’ products. DITA allows additional leverage since the information can also be customized and extended in a consistent, standard, pre-determined data format.

DITA metadata and domain vocabularies can be defined at an industry level, such as telecom, allowing other industries to leverage consistent vocabularies.

Standards-based• Define platform for interchange - DITA topic is base with fallback for specialization

Rapid development platform for extending base information• Rules for inheritance – allow others to add with small modifications, not rewrite DTD

from scratch

Reuse across functions• Reuse topics in education / learning environments



Web-browser view / information center view

Task

Concept

Reference

Online View

Multiple Product

Task 1 Task 2 Task 3

Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3

Reference 1 Reference 2 Reference 3

Task

Concept

Reference

Online View

Multiple Product




Task

Concept

Reference

Online View

Multiple Product




Integrated Instructions for Creating a Web Store Front

Serving the catalogto customers

Creating the database catalog

Managing the system

Designing the system

Messaging notifications

Component Instructions Integrated Instructions for Creating a Web Store FrontIntegrated Instructions for Creating a Web Store Front



Managing the system





Managing the system




Managing the system



Component Instructions

Integrated solution view

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