Update: Just got word that the date for this has been changed from Thursday November 8th to Monday November 19, 2012. Same time though. In the meantime the 2012 CIDM survey is still being run, and you access it here. Whenever JoAnn Hackos speaks, I listen. So I’ll be one of those planning on attendingRead More
This is a the fourth in a series of pieces devoted to “Thinking in DITA” aimed at providing technical writers just starting out with DITA the thought processes behind writing technical documents in DITA. Whereas most DITA tutorials focus on the mechanics of writing – such as DITA’s tag set – this series examines whatRead More
The folks at DITAToo have been running a survey asking people how they convert their legacy content over to DITA. The preliminary results are interesting if not terribly surprising: the vast majority of users are converting their content over from Unstructured FrameMaker, and after that, from Word: From the structure of the survey questions itRead More
The folks at Syncro Soft have released a minor update to their oXygen XML editor, which has some significant improvements for those using it on their DITA-based content. Here’s a list of the DITA-specific updates, derived from their press release: Refactoring Action to Move or Rename DITA Topics: You can safely rename or move aRead More
Early last week, in fact during their one-day DITA Fest conference, SDL announced a “new family of software products” under the banner of “SDL LiveContent”. Well, maybe not entirely new, and it was quickly evident either to anyone who has already been using their tools or has been watching the industry for a while thatRead More
This is a the third in a series of pieces devoted to “Thinking in DITA” aimed at providing technical writers just starting out with DITA the thought processes behind writing technical documents in DITA. Whereas most DITA tutorials focus on the mechanics of writing—such as DITA’s tag set—this series examines what goes into writing andRead More
This is the second in a series of pieces devoted to “Thinking in DITA” aimed at providing technical writers just starting out with DITA the thought processes behind writing technical documents in DITA. Whereas most DITA tutorials focus on the mechanics of writing—such as DITA’s tag set—this series examines what goes into writing and thinkingRead More
This is the first in a series of pieces devoted to “Thinking in DITA” aimed at providing technical writers just starting out with DITA the thought processes behind writing technical documents in DITA. Whereas most DITA tutorials focus on the mechanics of writing—such as DITA’s tag set—this series examines what goes into writing and thinkingRead More
I received word over the weekend that the folks at Alan Pringle were now shipping “Content Strategy 101”. It was written by Sarah O’Keefe and Alan Pringle. Subtitled “Transform Technical Content into a Business Asset”, the book’s brief blurb is: “Technical content is often the last in line for investment and innovation, but poor contentRead More
Another announcement about a free webinar on DITA/topic-based authoring that is coming out in early October. Here’s the blurb about it: “Using a topic-based approach can improve consistency and usability of information and make it easier to reuse topics in different contexts. It can also simplify maintenance, speed up the review process, and facilitate sharedRead More
