Re: [dita] DITA Implementation Knowledge Requirements (was DITA Taskmodel)

[ekimber <ekimber@reallysi.com>]

On 9/24/09 8:37 AM, "Joann Hackos" <joann.hackos@comtech-serv.com> wrote:

> I donıt think we can take this at all lightly. Despite Eliotıs argument that
> you have to be an XML expert programmer to implement DITA, that is not the
> reality in the user community. How will we possibly communicate the enormous
> problems that will result if conrefs no longer work? As the co-chair of the
> Adoption TC, I donıt even know where to begin.

You do not have to be an XML expert to implement DITA. What you have to be
is someone who *knows what to do* and someone who understands XML
*fundamentals*. The challenge we currently face in the community is that it
is difficult to learn what to do because it has not been written down in any
really coherent way--there is no well-established body of published
information on how to apply DITA within the context of a typical technical
writing enterprise.

Until that problem is addressed, JoAnn's concerns and frustrations will be
well founded and real. But it is not the TC's place to address those
concerns. It is the job of the community and the Adoption TC. The job of the
TC is to produce the best *technology* we can, not overengineered or
underengineered, clearly and completely defined.

But I think that we, the TC, need to have a clear understanding of what is
and isn't required in order to implement DITA effectively.

XML, and DITA, are sophisticated technologies for information management,
comparable to relational databases or similar information management
technologies. DITA is not a DTP or Word Processing system.

As such, the sophisticated use of DITA necessarily requires the efforts of
people with some specialized knowledge of the technology, just like setting
up any information management system requires people with knowledge of the
supporting technologies.

However, it is also the case that some basic configuration tasks, such as
creating shell document types, *are not hard* and can be done by anyone
willing to follow directions (e.g., as provided in my specialization
tutorial, which also describes the *mechanical* process of creating shells).
That is, given appropriate and clear instruction, anyone able to configure
FrameMaker or InDesign could just as easily set up their local shells and
configure Arbortext Editor or XMetal or OxygenXML and configure the Toolkit
and be ready to go. The problem is that that clear instruction is not there
yet.

In addition, we (the community) and tool vendors could (and need to) provide
more interactive tools to help make that task as easy to perform as
possible.

Computer-based technical writing has *always* required technical specialists
to set up, configure, and maintain the supporting technology, whether it was
GML or Interleaf or Framemaker. DITA doesn't change that. However, what it
*does* do is change the technology from one for which the tools are
fundamentally interactive to one where (today) you have to edit text files.
The problem is not that DITA is hard, the problem is that I can find 10
books on FrameMaker at Barnes and Noble and none on DITA.

The other thing DITA does is increase the sophistication of the content
dramatically over any non-XML-based writing technology. This again
necessarily increases the knowledge required to apply that technology
efficiently. One cannot expect to do more sophisticated things without
putting a bit more effort into doing them.

At the same time, Tool vendors have done a remarkably good job of taking
advantage of DITA's features that make configuring it and applying it to
specific problems *as easy as it could possibly be*.

Cheers,

E.

----
Eliot Kimber | Senior Solutions Architect | Really Strategies, Inc.
email:  ekimber@reallysi.com <mailto:ekimber@reallysi.com>
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