Florent André wrote:
Hi ! Welcome on Lenya !
Thank for this REALLY INTERESTING format. I don't know it before, and I
find underlying ideas very goods !
--------------------------
During my reading of wiki documentation, I find that :
"Future versions of HTML may support deeper transclusion of portions of
documents using XML technologies such as entities, XPointer document
referencing, and XSLT manipulations. (XPointer is patent-encumbered.)"
- So, for you, what is the main advantage of the DITA format in front of
possibilities offer by other html,xhtml,... format ?
This is not supposed to be an advertisement, and I apologize if this bit
is wandering OT
To briefly repeat what you've likely read (and for others): the
topic-based structuring of DITA allows for modular creation of data
(with some advanced selection, automatic referencing etc.). This allows
for comprehensive user documentation to be quickly produced by
assembling background information from preexisting files which can then
be slightly tailored and built on top of. Any changes are also easily
propagated through all of the documentation which uses the files, easing
maintenance.
This technology has generally seemingly been adopted by large
companies. I'm actually solo and use the above features to produce
enterprise-level documentation without a prohibitive time investment.
The advantage of DITA over HTML and XHTML is the semantic XML which is
then used for the multiple deliverables (also essentially what Cocoon is
geared towards). The most comparable XML based language is Docbook
(originally SGML) which is more full-publication oriented and therefore
lacks the content reuse related functionality.
- What kind of usecase do you imagine for the DITA/Lenya couple ?
I'm primarily interested in the fairly simple use of Lenya to manage the
DITA source (XML) files. Allowing an interface to easily create/modify
the files according to their schema (ported to RelaxNG), and maintain
the file structure. I would handle the creation of distributables using
Lenya-less Cocoon, which could then be incorporated back into Lenya to
provide previews or other relevant functionality.
My personal goal is to use Lenya to manage the files to be used outside
of Lenya; the optional driving of Lenya using DITA files could follow
(bringing some advantages with it) that but would likely require
significantly more time (which I likely wouldn't spend unless the
project gains momentum). I would think this could be beneficial to
Lenya as a whole also since it brings inherent information logic which
could smoothly carry into publications. This would enable things like
well structured sites to be automagically created from topics which
remain focused on the data.
---------------------------
Some interesting things I find during my "clic and read session" :
* An example of DITA more "sweet" than the specification :
http://dita-ot.sourceforge.net/doc/ot-userguide131/ditaotug131-18042007-garage.zip
* If I well understand the DITA Open Toolkit is a DITA processor that allow
to transform dita content into another format (pdf, html,...). The good
news are :
- This implementation is open-source
- in java
- seems to be active
- have an apache licenced release !
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/dita-ot/files/)
* don't find open source server editor for DITA (I think of a "funny-clic
editor for my mother" of course)...
There are few user-friendly free editors, I generally just use the XML
features in emacs or Eclipse. XMLMind XML Editor (XXE -
http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/) has decent integration. I believe
XMLSpy also has good support for a limited expense. Ensuring strong
support in BXE would be another of my goals with Lenya integration.
If you have another example, simple tutorial, cool information,... I will
be glad to read them.
Because it has yet to be widely adopted, there doesn't seem to be an
abundance of user information. If you're looking for a good overview
and want to kill some time, the videos at the link below cover all the
basics.
http://dita.xml.org/dita-introduction-authoring-and-information-architecture-workshop-full-day
have a good day.
On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:36:40 -0400, Matt Whipple <[email protected]>
wrote:
I've just started to use Lenya and am interested in integrating DITA
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Information_Typing_Architecture)
into it. I've started to work on an initial ResourceType module but am
wondering if there are any existing solutions already out there. Any
guidance would be appreciated.
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