[austechwriter] Re: DITA versus DocBook
- From: Stuart Burnfield <sburnf@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 17:07:40 +0800
Melanie, there's a good paper on the IBM developerWorks site that
introduces XML, structured documentation, information typing, and
IBM's DITA. It also has links to other useful resources on XML and
these other topics:
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-dita1/index.html
"The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based,
end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering
technical information. This architecture consists of a set of design
principles for creating "information-typed" modules at a topic level and
for using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product
support portals on the Web. This document is a roadmap for DITA: what it
is and how it applies to technical documentation."
Craig: DocBook is the best known and I think the oldest SGML DTD for
structured documentation. Another is IBMIDDoc, which is used in-house
at IBM. Both were designed with traditional technical manuals in mind.
It's not that they're limited to paper output or a particular page layout.
It's just that when the designers thought about how to classify all the
parts of a document, the sort of document they had in mind (perhaps
unconsciously) was the cover-TOC-part-chapter-subheading-appendix-index
DITA is a newer DTD, this time implemented in XML and designed for
flexible, topic-based
documents and many different output formats.
Think of SGML like Papa Bear's chair: too big and hard for most
people. HTML is Baby Bear's chair: too small and restrictive.
XML is (meant to be) like Mama Bear's chair: just right.
---
Stuart Burnfield
Information Developer
Australian Programming Centre
Craig Hadden
<CraigH@AttacheSoftware To:
"'austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
.com> cc:
Sent by: Subject: [austechwriter]
DITA versus DocBook
austechwriter-bounce@fr
eelists.org
11/08/03 02:34 PM
Please respond to
austechwriter
Melanie (Kendell) wrote:
> DITA seems to be a better fit [than DocBook] if you
> are documenting for anything other than purely paper
Like many tech writers, I am interested in XML but know little about it.
The
above quote intrigued me because I understood that XML is meant to give
media-independence to content.
Melanie (or anyone else), can you give (or point me to) a very brief
example
of how DITA and DocBook differ with respect to their "paper-centricity"?
Thanks,
Craig
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