atw: Re: Replacing Word (Long...)
- From: "Anthony Self" <ASelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2011 11:41:12 +1000
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
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