TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:DITA versus HAT From:Andrew Harvie <withanie -at- gmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Tue, 5 Jun 2012 13:38:00 -0300
G'day.
I've spent the last few years using one of the standard
help-authoring programs - one that doesn't include any DITA awareness.
For the past few days, I've been researching DITA because my nerdy
side just loves the idea of structure, metadata, organization...
What I've found so far has left me feeling a bit bemused. It's as if
I've stumbled through a time warp, back to the late 1980's. I have
write Ant scripts in order to have anything other than the standard
ugly output? Use the Microsoft Help Compiler after running the DITA
transform in order to add index references and context sensitive
mapping ID values to my CHM output? (I saw in a Scriptorium webcast
that they're charging pretty good dollars for a improved DITA to PDF
transform. That implies a high level of difficulty in order to
customize the transformation scripts.)
One thing I have noticed is that many of the DITA references that
I've found on the web, date back to 2007 or before. Perhaps someone
out there has created a help-authoring tool that allows you to work in
a native DITA environment (not just import DITA files) _and_ provides
all of the output-beautification features that one expects in a modern
help authoring tool? Anyone?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Create and publish documentation through multiple channels with Doc-To-Help. Choose your authoring formats and get any output you may need.
Try Doc-To-Help, now with MS SharePoint integration, free for 30-days.
