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DITA

The PDF landscape for DITA content

I found this article in the 2010 (!!) archives and have updated it. Surprisingly, the general gist is still accurate.

There are numerous alternatives for producing PDF output from DITA content. The approach you choose will depend on your output requirements—do you need images floating in text, sidebars, and unique layouts on each page? How often do you republish content? How much content do you publish? Do you need to create variants for different audiences? Do you provide content in multiple languages?

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Webinar: Discovering the Basics of DITA with LearningDITA

Join Sarah O’Keefe for “Discovering the Basics of DITA with LearningDITA” a free webinar tailored for technical writers who want to learn how to create content in accordance with the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). You’ll discover the essentials of DITA—what it is, why it’s crucial for creating structured content, and how it revolutionizes consistency and efficiency in documentation.

By exploring core elements such as topics, maps, and metadata, along with DITA specializations like task, concept, and reference topics, you’ll learn why organizations around the globe use DITA to craft modular, reusable content and put it to work.

Attendees will be introduced to LearningDITA—a free, self-paced, online DITA training course. Lessons include exercises, links to additional resources and videos, and quizzes to test your knowledge.

Register for the webinar here.

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Case study Content operations

Replatforming an early DITA implementation

Bill Swallow, Director of Operations at Scriptorium, and Emilie Herman, Director of Publishing at the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), shared lessons learned from a DITA implementation project. 

What did we want to accomplish with our project? One was to develop a single source of truth for our content, a single system to host all of it. Secondly, we wanted to modernize our information architecture and our content models and document all of it clearly. Lastly, we wanted to futureproof our content operations and go to a digital-first workflow.

— Emilie Herman

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Content operations Content strategy Podcast Podcast transcript

What’s next after LearningDITA? (podcast)

If you’ve taken the courses at LearningDITA.com and you’re interested in starting a DITA project, check out episode 163 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast where Bill Swallow and Sarah O’Keefe talk about the steps you can take to get funding.

“Showing up with cookies never hurts, but what is your executive’s motivation from a business point of view? What are they trying to accomplish in their goals for this next quarter or month or year, and so on? You need to show them, assuming that you can, that moving to structured content, moving to DITA, and changing tools is going to help achieve those business goals.

— Sarah O’Keefe

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How DITA Supports Better Learning Content

Webinar

Managing learning content is a massive undertaking. Learning can take place online and offline, in classrooms, e-learning environments, with or without live instruction, in a group or solo, and more.

If you’re ready to wrangle the beast of learning content, learn how DITA can support you in this webinar featuring Bill Swallow, hosted by Scott Abel of the Content Wrangler, and sponsored by Heretto.

Blue webinar cover with white text saying. "How DITA supports better learning content," subtitle: "Bill Swallow on using the Darwin Information Typing Architecture to produce learning content."

Register for the webinar on BrightTALK. If you can’t attend, register to access the recording after the show!

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