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An incomplete puzzle: DITA OT stylesheets

A recent post on the dita-users Yahoo group asked how to customize the DITA OT stylesheets in view of the fact that there isn’t much documentation available.

From my work customizing and otherwise perverting the DITA OT, I can sympathize with these frustrations. When I started investigating OT customizations, I found many well-crafted tutorials on how to customize and specialize the OT. These were a great starting point, but they only got me so far. In its current state, the documentation is an incomplete jigsaw puzzle; the trees and buildings are filled in nicely, but the sky is still waiting for someone with patience. (Block that metaphor!)

Because there is no documentation available at the individual template level, you need to reconsider the task at hand. I look on it as debugging, decoding, or sleuthing. With that in mind, I find the following to be very useful:

  • Find a good visual grep-like utility. I use AgentRansack, a free version of FileLocator Pro (it’s free and amazing). This enables me to locate all files that contain a particular class identifier. The visual aspect of the tool allows me to see the context quickly.
  • Use a programmer’s editor that supports XML and XSL. We use Oxygen. Not only does it help check validity and closes tags automatically, but it also provides a handy sidebar that lists the templates and their modes.
  • Liberally spread <xsl:comment> or <xsl:message> directives through the stylesheets you’re examining. That helps figure out where you are. Use <xsl:value-of> or <xsl:copy-of> to figure out what you’ve got.
  • Once you’ve figured out what happens in one of the OT templates, add comments. Now the next time you come back to it, you won’t waste time.

Probably the best form of documentation that the OT could provide here is additional comments in the stylesheets, particularly about the order of processing. I find I add many comments about where to find the template that handles nodes from an <xsl:apply-templates> directive.

One further note. On Tuesday, September 23, I’ll be presenting the third of our “Best Practices in Structured Authoring and Publishing” joint Webinar series with JustSystems. In this presentation I’ll describe a number of approaches you can use to customize DITA OT output. For more information, visit the JustSystems web site.

Simon Bate
September 5, 2008
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DITA

The hidden costs of DITA

Originally published in STC Intercom, April 2008

DITA is a free, pre-made XML document structure. That statement can lead to a few erroneous assumptions: if it’s free, then it will cut down on costs, and if it’s pre-made, it will cut down on labor. There are several things to consider when choosing a DITA solution. Does your staff have the skills to author in a DITA environment? Will additional training be required? Does DITA even match your content model, and if it doesn’t, is it worth the effort to change?

Sarah’s conclusion? “DITA may be free, but it’s not cheap.”

Sarah O'Keefe
April 19, 2008
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DITA DITA XML—authors Structured content

When is XML the wrong answer?

Originally published in STC Intercom, November 2007

XML can benefit a publishing workflow in many ways: improving content reuse, consistency, and potentially automating much of the process. That all sounds wonderful, but XML is not the logical answer for everyone.

Implementing a structured authoring solution requires a significant change from the familiar desktop publishing routine to new tools, technologies, and processes. Switching to XML is going to cost time and money. Depending on your needs, it may not be the most efficient solution.

Sarah O'Keefe
November 19, 2007
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DITA DITA XML—authors Structured content

Why XML and structured authoring is a tough transition

Found on technicalwriter’s blog:

There are several applications that incorporate features for DITA use, such as XMetal and Altova Authentic, but how much value do they provide? (Looking over the online documentation for XMetal, you will see some pretty shaky formatting and copyfitting.)

There may well be formatting and copyfitting issues. Wouldn’t surprise me at all. But talk about missing the forest for the trees!

DITA/XML/structured authoring are important because they improve how information is stored. To question their value because somebody produced documentation using them that doesn’t look so great…let’s try an analogy:

Last week, I went to a restaurant and the food was terrible. I looked in the kitchen and saw Calphalon pots and pans. I conclude that you should not buy Calphalon because the food they produce is terrible.

The quality of your food is determined by things such as the quality of the ingredients and the skill of the chef. The pan you choose does contribute — it helps to use the right size and a high-quality pan, but to dismiss DITA because one example doesn’t look quite right is pretty much like dismissing Calphalon because somebody once cooked something that didn’t taste very good in it.

PS I like Calphalon. And I have produced my share of problematic entrees.
PPS DITA is not right for everybody.

Sarah O'Keefe
May 4, 2007
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DITA

Somebody does NOT like DITA

From Jon Bosak’s closing keynote at XML 2006:

Another ancient subject that seems to be popping up again is the idea of modular document creation. This is one of those concepts that comes through about once a decade, seduces all the writing managers with the prospect of greater efficiency, takes over entire writing departments for a couple of years, and then falls out of favor as people finally realize that document reuse is not a solvable problem in document delivery but rather an intractable problem in document writing — which is, how to retain any sense of logical connection between pieces of information while writing as if your target audience consisted entirely of people afflicted with ADD.

I don’t think I agree completely, but he does have a point.

I could go on at length about this, but instead I’ll simply leave you with the observation that my personal love affair with modular documentation occurred in 1978 and that I haven’t seen a thing since then that would change the conclusions I reached about it almost thirty years ago. This is not to say that I’m trying to discourage the technical writing community whence I came from their enthusiasm for the modular authoring technology du jour, since engagement in such efforts is virtually guaranteed to buy tech writers a few years in which they can act like software engineers and present themselves as engaged in cutting-edge informational technology development rather than plain old technical writing. That strategy has worked great for some of us.

I think perhaps the arguments for and against single-source publishing are a better place to look. There is a school of thought that argues that single sourcing results in inferior deliverables, both in print and online. But the cost savings from single sourcing are so compelling that nobody really argues for hand-crafting printed and online materials separately any more. (Based on my experience, I think that the quality difference between material that is single sourced (well) and material that is hand-crafted (well) is quite small; perhaps around 10 percent. But that last ten percent is extremely expensive.)

With XML/DITA/modular documentation, there is a similar cost argument. Document reuse and especially localization workflows benefit from modular documentation. For localization teams, getting content in topics rather than monolithic books can result in incremental localization and thus the ability to “sim-ship”; to ship the product in the source language and target languages simultaneously. This, in turn, means a global product launch and a shorter wait for revenue from the markets for which localization is required.

Thus, requirement to accelerate product deliverables and save money on localization (because of more efficient reuse) are going to drive implementation of modular documentation. The argument that non-modular documentation is better documentation will become irrelevant.

Sarah O'Keefe
January 11, 2007
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