- From: Andrzej Zydron <azydron@xml-intl.com>
- Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 16:02:54 +0100
- To: public-i18n-its@w3.org
Hi Everyone, A quick summary of DITA for the public-i18n-its@w3.org mailing list: The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is a proposed OASIS standard (http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=dita). It provides a comprehensive architecture for the authoring, production and delivery of technical documentation. DITA was originally developed within IBM and then donated to OASIS. The essence of DITA is the concept of topic based publication construction and development that allows for the modular reuse of specific sections. Each section is authored independently and then each publication is constructed from the section modules. This means that individual sections only need to be authored and translated once, and may be reused many times over in different publications. A core component of DITA is the concept of defining generic "information-typed" modules at a topic level. DITA represents a very intelligent and well thought out approach to the process of publishing technical documentation. At the core of DITA is the concept the ‘topic’. A topic is a unit of information that describes a single task, concept, or reference item. DITA uses an object orientated approach to the concept of topics encompassing the standard object oriented characteristics of polymorphisms, encapsulation and message passing. The main features of DITA are: 1. Topic centric level of granularity 2. Substantial reuse of existing assets 3. Specialization at the topic and domain level 4. Meta data property based processing 5. Leveraging existing popular element names and attributes from XHTML For a comprehensive introduction to DITA please refer to the IBM DITA information page (http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-dita1/). I predict a very good future for DITA, on the basis that it represents a very well thought out and flexible architecture for content creation and publishing. From the localization point of view it means that once you have translated a topic into a given target language, then it can be reused time and time again as long as the source language content has not been modified. -- email - azydron@xml-intl.com smail - c/o Mr. A.Zydron PO Box 2167 Gerrards Cross Bucks SL9 8XF United Kingdom Mobile +(44) 7966 477 181 FAX +(44) 1753 480 465 www - http://www.xml-intl.com This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you may not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. If verification is required please request a hard-copy version. Unless explicitly stated otherwise this message is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as a solicitation or offer.
Received on Sunday, 10 April 2005 15:02:58 UTC