Conquering the Mark of the Web (DITA OT version)
Whew! Now I know how St. George felt after slaying the dragon. I’ve defeated the Mark of the Web beast and have lived to tell about it.
Adding new languages to the DITA Open Toolkit
The DITA Open Toolkit comes with support for many languages, but you can always find one that is not yet covered. Fortunately, adding a new language does not require any strange incantations.
Calculating the ROI for XML and DITA
I delivered this presentation on October 2 at Lavacon 2010 in San Diego. Many thanks to the noble souls who showed up at 8 a.m. (!) on a beautiful Saturday (!!) morning.
Webcast: Extracting deliverables from DITA
In this webcast, Sarah O’Keefe of Scriptorium surveys DITA’s publishing options and weighs their practical implications.
Tech Tips: Quick Word to DITA table conversion
The other day I had to convert a large table from Word to DITA. I started looking at Word XML output and thought about transforming it with XSL (which I have done in the past), but that seemed to be too much trouble for this document. Then I remembered a technique an old SQL coder showed me for loading large amounts of data into a SQL table. I realized this technique could be readily adapted to DITA.
Webcast: DITA Specialization 101
Simon Bate of Scriptorium Publishing introduces specialization in the DITA open toolkit and walks viewers through the fundamentals.
Webcast: DITA-FMx demonstration
This webcast demonstrates using the DITA-FMx plugin with FrameMaker 9 to author, edit, and create output from DITA content. Topics covered during the demo include creating DITA topics using different options and templates and generating a book from the map and then saving to a PDF file.
Assessing DITA as a foundation for XML implementation
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is being positioned as the solution for XML-based technical content. Is DITA right for you?
This white paper describes the potential business advantages of DITA, provides a high-level overview of DITA’s most important features, and then discusses how you can decide whether to develop a DITA-based XML implementation.
Webcast: Demystifying DITA to PDF publishing
When you implement a DITA-based workflow, you face myriad new challenges, such as getting accustomed to topic-based writing, exploring reuse strategies, and specialization. The most difficult technical obstacle is usually setting up a PDF/print publishing workflow. The DITA Open Toolkit provides very basic PDF output, but for organizations who require attractive, professional-looking PDF content, extensive and expensive customization is required. FrameMaker is easier to configure than the Open Toolkit and produces lovely PDF files, but can you work around the limitations of the DITA support? InDesign offers the highest quality typography but has significant limitations in working with structured content. This session discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each approach to extracting PDF from DITA content.
This session is intended for individuals who are considering a DITA implementation and expect to need PDF output. Basic familiarity with DITA, XML, and related technologies is helpful but not required.
NOTE: During the recording, the presenters will mention polls. You will not see these polls while viewing the recording, but the presenters will describe the results.
2010: A DITA Odyssey
When you’re considering tools for authoring DITA content and creating output, there are many choices to evaluate. To make your journey toward DITA implementation easier, Scriptorium is offering free webinars in early 2010 to show you how three tools handle DITA-based information.
Odysseus in front of Scylla and Charybdis by Johann Heinrich Füssli (Wikipedia)
On January 19, Sarah O’Keefe will show you how MadCap Flare supports DITA constructs, and on February 16, Simon Bate will demonstrate the DITA features in the oXygen XML editor. On March 16, Scott Prentice of Leximation will demonstrate how the DITA-FMx plugin works with FrameMaker 9.
As an added bonus, attendees can win a free license of the tool shown during each demo! For more information about these sessions and to register, visit our events page.
If there are other topics you’d like to see covered in later free webcasts, please send suggestions to [email protected].
