RE: Help with Docbook (an alternative)

Subject: RE: Help with Docbook (an alternative)
From: France Baril <France -dot- Baril -at- ixiasoft -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 09:22:38 -0400


I have tried translating my doc to XML with the docbook DTD. As many of you said, the tag set is huge, which is not such a big problem as you can decide to use your own subset. An other problem is that many tags useful to my specific documents were missing... Adding new tags is a solution. It defeats some of the ideas behind docbook, which is to have a std and to be able to send information people can read in their preferred customized layout.

I have found another alternative: DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture). It is a documentation architecture proposed by IBM. I am in trial period with this new architecture and DTD, but for now it seems to me like a flexible solution as it has been created to be extended and customized. Moreover, it promotes the development of modular documentation, which is great for reference documentation, it forces writers to group information so that every section presents a concept or procedure that stands on its own, in other words, it helps to create non-linear documentation and therefore single sourcing.

I wish I could tell you more, but I've had to put my transition project on the ice until fall as I am preparing documentation for a coming release and my TW collegue is on a maternity leave.

If you are interested, you can find more info at: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-dita1/.

France Baril
Rédactrice Technique / Technical Writer
IXIASOFT
(514) 279-4942
france -dot- baril -at- ixiasoft -dot- com

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