atw: Re: Replacing Word (Long...)
- From: "Rosemary O'Donoghue" <rosemary.odonoghue@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2011 11:56:11 +1000
Thanks, Anthony, I'll check out the tools.
Cheers,
Rosemary O'Donoghue
TechWriting
Clarity out of Complexity
Mob: 0419 24 3636
rosemary.odonoghue@xxxxxxxxx
www.businessprocesswriting.com
_____
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Anthony Self
Sent: Thursday, 28 April 2011 11:41 AM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: Replacing Word (Long...)
Hi Rosemary
I might be able to help here. DITA is a technical communication standard,
and a methodology, but it is not a software tool.
There are many software tools on the market that create documents to the
DITA standard, and the majority of those would be "user friendly". There are
no specialised DITA authoring tools that force you to work with the XML code
that underpins DITA. DITA authoring tools include XMetaL, oXygen, Serna,
XXE, FrameMaker, and Arbortext. There are at least ten more. As all of work
to the standard, you can take their DITA source and edit it with any other
DITA tool without any complications.
One of the differences in working with DITA is that the publishing process
(turning your words into a reading format such as Web, eBook, PDF, etc) is
automated. For some DITA authoring environments, that means that a different
software tool is used for publishing.
Another difference with DITA is that it suits an environment where you are
working on a collection of publications, not just one at a time. You create
a repository of topics, and then assemble those topics into publications.
Some topics (or modules of topics) might appear in multiple publications. To
manage this side of things, many DITA authoring teams also use a DITA CMS.
There are many of these.
Although you can probably find an "all-in-one" tool, I think it is far more
effective to choose a little set of tools.
In a DITA authoring environment with a good toolset and proficient writers,
wording and logo changes (and the like) that affect a myriad of documents
becomes a trivial task.
Tony Self
>>> "Rosemary O'Donoghue" 28/04/11 10:46 AM >>>
Thanks, Ken. What I?m wondering is if someone has made DITA (or another tool
that achieves the same thing) user-friendly, such that you don?t need to be
too IT-literate to use it. In a lot of the places where I?ve worked, some
text (such as a safety warning) is re-used in several documents. When
changes are made to the wording (as invariably happens), it becomes a
labour-intensive nightmare to update the myriad of documents containing that
text. Or, for example, if the company is taken over by another, and logo
changes are required on all documents, can document management systems
automate that change? I?m wondering if there is a product out there that
does these sorts of things, or whether someone needs to create one.
Because so many people are relatively comfortable with MS Word, it seems to
me that the system should at least ?appear? to work like Word, but with
added features.
Rosemary O?Donoghue
TechWriting
Clarity out of Complexity
Mob: 0419 24 3636
rosemary.odonoghue@xxxxxxxxx
www.businessprocesswriting.com <http://www.businessprocesswriting.com/>
.
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