How to cite this paper

Jain, Pradeep, and Joe Gollner. “A lite DITA+ model for technical manuals.” Presented at Balisage: The Markup Conference 2018, Washington, DC, July 31 - August 3, 2018. In Proceedings of Balisage: The Markup Conference 2018. Balisage Series on Markup Technologies, vol. 21 (2018). https://doi.org/10.4242/BalisageVol21.Jain01.

Balisage: The Markup Conference 2018
July 31 - August 3, 2018

Balisage Paper: A lite DITA+ model for technical manuals

Pradeep Jain

President and Chief Content Architect

Ictect, Inc.

Pradeep Jain is the Founder and Chief Content Architect for Ictect, Inc. His specialization is in Intelligent Content, Semantic Technologies, High-quality XML, and Content Architectures for large-scale applications. He has extensive experience in implementing Electronic Publishing processes for the Department of Defense (AFI 33-360, MILSPEC, AR 25-30, and DA PAM 25-40), Book Publishers (ePUB and DocBook), Technical Documentation (DITA), Journal Publishers (JATS), and Educational Publishers (QTI).

Joe Gollner

Managing Director

Gnostyx Research Inc.

Joe Gollner is an independent advisor to Ictect, providing objective insight and guidance on industry trends, technology changes, solution architectures, and business operations. As an independent advisor, Joe brings over 25 years of experience as a successful manager of businesses, software products, strategic partnerships, research & development efforts, intellectual property portfolios, and solution projects — all within the content industry. He also brings a history of designing and deploying award-winning content solutions for customers around the world that include silicon-valley start-ups, governmental agencies, non-profit organizations, and global enterprises.

Copyright © Ictect, Inc.

Abstract

Recent work with two major healthcare organizations on DITA XML revealed two somewhat contradictory requirements: (1) The DITA must be lightweight so that it is easy for non-technical users to understand, and (2) Additional elements and attributes were needed to manage organization-specific information. The content architecture team developed a method for creating derivatives of the DITA XML schema that accommodate these two requirements. The final XML content is compliant with DITA, and therefore allows open source and commercial software systems to be used. This presentation will describe the process and present some examples. We call it “Lite DITA Plus”!