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July 11, 2016

New LearningDITA course: Introduction to reuse

We’ve introduced DITA and covered the basics of authoring topics and building maps on LearningDITA.com. (Many thanks to our 1,400 subscribers and counting!) Now we’re kicking off a new series of more advanced courses with Introduction to reuse in DITA.

Ducklings (Flickr: Eric Sonstroem)

Ducklings (Flickr: Eric Sonstroem)

This course includes the following lessons, which will help you get started with reusing your content:

  • Introduction to reuse
  • Creating reusable topics
  • Reusing topics and maps
  • Using content references

You’ll learn about the benefits that reuse can bring to your organization, from saving time and cost to improving localization. The lessons show you how to determine what content is reusable, demonstrate writing for reuse, and offer best practices for maximizing your content’s reuse potential.

This course will also help you take your first steps into the practical side of reuse. You’ll gain some hands-on experience with reusing topics and maps and creating conrefs. The guided practice with example code and on-your-own exercises will give you a chance to see reuse in action.

This course was contributed by Mike Rice and Annie Chen of easyDITA, with additional content by Simon Bate, Jake Campbell, and me of Scriptorium. The accompanying slide deck on Content Reuse was created by Pam Noreault, Tracey Chalmers, and Julie Landman.

As always, we welcome your feedback! If there are any subjects you’d like to see covered in future courses, feel free to contribute your ideas or content to the LearningDITA GitHub repository (link updated January 2017). You can also take a look at our project roadmap (link updated January 2017) of current and planned future courses and let us know what you’d like to learn. To make sure you don’t miss any new courses, sign up for LearningDITA.com announcements (you can also sign up during site registration).

Special thanks to our sponsors: oXygen XML Editor, Adobe, IXIASOFT, SDL, easyDITA, and Flow.