learningbywrote.ditamap
Exploiting Layout and Content
Don Day, Contelligence Group
What isn't DITA?
Move over, "age ofmiracles and wonder." It seems that everyone is having epiphanies these days. I can teach you how to have one, as well. It's just a matter of concentration and visualization!
Creating DITA maps using outliners
As long as you have a browser, The Cloud is your friend. I've previously described the potential role of OPML-based outlining tools for DITA map editing in a browser, but a recent DITA Chicks post by Karen Lowe on creating DITA maps using spreadsheets got me to wondering, "If the only tool I had was a web-based outlining tool, what could I do with it?"
Creating DITA topics using your cell phone
Back before inks were invented, engraving was the main form of writing. You formed a tablet out of clay and used a stick to impress something that looked like "<LI>" on the surface, and there you had it: primitive markup. Photography is a modern form of leaving a mark without ink, so today we are going to explore how to create a DITA document using a cell-phone camera as your XML editor.
Creating DITA topics using reStructuredText
To a writer whose only tool is a flat text editor, formatted text is the next best thing to a real DITA editor.
Creating DITA topics using email
This post is another in a short series of explorations of alternative ways to create and/or edit DITA content.
Creating DITA topics using Twitter
I am creating today's topic by dictating the content directly to my cell phone. A dictation application allows me to construct the structure in the resultant topic. I'm thinking of calling this concept DITATwita! ;-)
Dictation for structured writing
I enjoy writing about how to do more things, more easily with DITA. After many years in the structured writing field, I've come to appreciate the versatility and usability of the validating editors that support DITA so well. But I've been surprised recently in rediscovering the usefulness of dictation for initial content input for structured document formats--DITA tasks in particular.
Creating DITA with HTML forms
The pattern of "What isn't DITA?"is familiar: if a text object of any kind has a title and optionally some kind of descriptive content, it is transformationally analogous to a simple DITA topic. The observation is important because it opens up a wide range of ways in which initial content for DITA repositories can be created. Today, we'll examine the use of HTML forms for particular recording scenarios
Creating DITA topics with a blog or wiki
I've decided to conclude my explorations of alternative DITA writing approaches with a discussion of how existing blogs or wikis can be pressed into service, at least for intial content creation (often the hardest "first mile" in getting knowledge out of the minds of subject matter experts in a company and into a repurposable form). Whereas the expeDITA project demonstrates how to create a blog or wiki with DITA as native source, here I explore the other path--using common collaboration tools to create content that can be exported relatively easily as DITA.