Re: [dita] Re: Comparison between DITA and S1000D

[Eliot Kimber <ekimber@innodata-isogen.com>]

john_hunt@us.ibm.com wrote:

> DITA, however, has several key distinguishing characteristics, compared 
> with S1000D:
> 
> 1) Information type specialization. 

Rather than comparing DITA and S1000D at the element type level, it 
might be more productive to simply retrofit the DITA class mechanism to 
S1000D--this would provide much of the unique value of DITA compared to 
S1000D (since both provide comparable content structures) and could be 
done without affecting any existing applications or document instances.

This is one reason I pushed for breaking the specialization mechanism 
out as a separate specification--it has tremendous value independent of 
the value of DITA's topic-based vocabulary and could be usefully applied 
to any information types.

That is, there is a general requirement for some sort of architecture 
mechanism, at least for technical documentation (if not for all XML 
applications), and DITA provides just such a mechanism in a form that is 
both well adapted for the XML Web-based world, that is proven in 
practice, and that requires minimal extra effort to use and implement.

Cheers,

Eliot
-- 
W. Eliot Kimber
Professional Services
Innodata Isogen
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Austin, TX 78759
(512) 372-8122

eliot@innodata-isogen.com
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