RE: DOCBOOK-APPS: Help project structure

["Nancy (Paisner) Harrison" <nancyh@rational.com>]

Michael,

The last time I asked (Don Day, I think it was) for a pointer to someone at 
IBM who was using DITA as a model for print books, I was told that no one 
there was doing it yet. That was a while ago, and DITA was fairly new then.

Now that it's been around a bit, could you point me to someone using it for 
both types of output?  As Denis says, we at Rational need to single-source 
for online and print, and the printed versions of the material tend to be 
fairly hierarchical technical manuals.

In particular, I'd be very interested in seeing how DITA can be used to

1. accomodate the 'glue text' that books need to connect physically 
sequential topics
2. accomodate the necessity for some topics being literally (and 
physically) subcomponents of other topics, rather than simply being pointed 
to by the parent topic.


Thanks,


Nancy

At 01:53 PM 3/18/2002 -0500, Bradford, Denis wrote:
>I appreciate the correction, apologize for not reading more carefully. Your
>point is particularly well-taken that topic-oriented information works just
>as well for books.
>
>Denis
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: mpriestl@ca.ibm.com [mailto:mpriestl@ca.ibm.com]
> > Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 11:52 AM
> > To: denisb@Rational.Com
> > Subject: re your post on docbook-apps
> >
> >> In fact, even if some
> >> specialized
> >> online DTD becomes widely accepted, lots of folks (like us)
> >> need to publish
> >> both print and online docs, and may not be able to use it.
> >> Those people
> >> will
> >> still need the flexibility and extensibility of DocBook.
> >> _____
> >> Denis
> >>
> >
> > This isn't true. DITA is designed specifically for
> > singlesourcing, not for
> > online information.  Topic-oriented information often gets
> > talked of as
> > "the online model", but it works just as well for books.
> >
> > I'm not subscribed to the docbook-apps list, but if you want
> > to continue
> > this on xml-docs, I will respond to it there. (Feel free to
> > forward this
> > reply to docbook-apps as well).
> >
> > Michael Priestley
> > DITA Specialization Architect
> > mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
> > Dept 833 IBM Canada    t/l: 969-3233    phone: 905-413-3233
> > Toronto Information Development
> >


________________________
Nancy (Paisner) Harrison
Rational Software
Lexington  MA
nancyh@rational.com