Tom Aldous from Adobe provided a great overview of what’s available in the Technical Communication Suite, and in particular the DITA features in FrameMaker and RoboHelp.
For details, visit www.adobe.com.
Thanks Tom!
Scott Prentice, president of Leximation, Inc., presented a demo of DITA to PDF publishing through FrameMaker and DITA-FMx. The new FMx-Auto addon for DITA-FMx, unlocks the API features in DITA-FMx to allow automated processing and publishing (in particular PDF publishing). With FMx-Auto installed, you can create your own scripts using the FDK (FrameMaker Developers Kit), FrameScript, or ExtendScript. Or, you can use the AutoFM plugin provided with FMx-Auto, which lets you open, process, and publish your DITA map into a PDF.
DITA-FMx supports FrameMaker versions 7.2, 8, 9, and 10, and FMx-Auto is available in server and desktop versions depending on your workflow and needs.
Even if you’re not using FrameMaker for authoring, you can take advantage of its superior and easy to use PDF publishing capabilities.
» Presentation/demo video (1 hour)
Adam Kozyniak, Co-founder and CEO of Codex Systems presented their new “light weight” DITA editor called Codex. This editor is targeted at people who may be able to benefit from the modular nature of DITA authoring but don’t need (or want) all of the overhead imposed by an editor that supports the entire DITA specification. Codex is an Adobe AIR application, which means that it will install on both Windows and Mac systems.
At this time Codex only supports the creation and editing of “topic” topics and a limited number of elements. The interface is very easy to use, and could be used by anyone regardless of their knowledge of DITA or structured authoring. Codex also lets you create maps, and has a very slick method for adding and arranging topic references. For this feature alone, I’d consider using Codex as an easy way to create new maps.
After the presentation we had a lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of such an editor, with many people feeling that a lightweight editor definitely has its place in their organization, but it would need to be a bit more feature-rich than Codex is currently. Because of the limited support for elements and topic types, it may be difficult to integrate into many existing authoring workflows. We discussed a possible feature that would allow the end user to define the set of limited topic types and elements, and thought that this could resolve the issue of wanting to “keep it simple” while remaining flexible enough for various needs.
It sounds like Codex will be adding more features over the coming months, so this is definitely something to keep your eye on.
» “Video” recording 1h11m – Unfortunately the video seems to be messed up! The audio is good though. To actually see Codex, go to their website and download a trial.
This meeting was quite the event. Adam was presenting remotely from Japan, we also had remote attendees from Israel, Florida, and Los Angeles (well, actually Orange Co.). Our in-house audience was made up of many of the usual folks from the area, but we also had a couple of out of town guests from North Carolina and Los Angeles. It’s great to be able to include so many people in our gatherings! Thanks again to Citrix for the use of GoToMeeting which makes it possible to include remote attendees!
Liz Fraley of Single-Sourcing Solutions presented slides and a live demo of PTC Arbortext 6.0. This new version of Arbortext offers full support for DITA 1.2. It also adds Schematron support, additional languages for spell checking, and other enhancements.
Slides to be available soon.
2011-06-08_SVDIG-June.mp3 – audio
Joe Gelb of Suite Solutions, presented to a large crowd of in-room and virtual attendees, a discussion on the DITA 1.2 Classification and Subject Scheme.
Metadata is used by many to categorize DITA content. But categorization is not enough. More and more, companies are developing taxonomies to enable easier access to information. As you consider dynamic publishing and web deployment to meet the evolving expectations of your content consumers and the Google generation, classifying the subject matter in your content set and the relationships between that subject matter becomes critical. Using a real use case, Joe will demonstrate how you can use the DITA 1.2 classification and subject scheme to create, apply and publish your taxonomy using the same architecture you use to develop, manage and publish your DITA content.
Video recording 1h15m – I apologize for the extra noise near the end as I was moving the Polycom around to try to pick up the questions from the audience.
MaryLee Grant and Laura Clymer from Dell gave us a great overview and tour of their DITA authoring and publishing workflow using SDL Trisoft and PTC Arbortext.
More info to come soon!
Anna van Raaphorst and Dick Johnson lead a very interesting discussion about techniques for leveraging DITA content on websites. Dick has created a Python script that “publishes” DITA content into two different web CMS systems, WordPress and Drupal. This content is treated as the “reference” material, and once published it appears as integrated content on the website. They have two different websites that make use of this technology ..
Handout: DITAmashups_20110209.pdf
Scott Prentice mentioned that he had implemented a method for exporting DITA content from a WordPress website. This was used to create a book honoring a retiring professor. Past students were informed about the website and they contributed comments to the WordPress blog. Scott was then able to export all of the comments (including pictures and formatting) to a single DITA file that was opened in FrameMaker, where it was then exported to PDF. The PDF was sent to lulu.com to create a small hardbound book as a present for the professor.
We had an interesting discussion dealing with how to best import DITA files into InDesign (specifically CS4 and CS5). It was a very hands-on meeting, with a real-world project as the test bed.
Like most DITA-type projects the important thing is the preparation. Importing the actual DITA files is as simple as File > Import XML, and then dragging and dropping elements onto the artboard.
Create Paragraph tags to match your DITA tags and use Structure’s Map Tags to Styles to create a table that brings in the formatting easily. To modify the text, just edit the paragraph style.
When adding multiple DITA files, use Append when adding to an existing flow (good for columnar text) and use Merge when creating a new flow (good for individual text boxes).
Notes provided by Joanne Grey
Topic: Year-end Social .. Dinner, Drinks, and DITA at Pedro’s!
We had another great turnout for our year-end social at Pedro’s Restaurant and Cantina. Pedro’s does a great job at providing an area where we can mingle and chat before sitting down to eat. Despite the weather, we had a great time!
Looking forward to another year of DITA with SVDIG!