Hackos on DITA and Localization

JoAnn Hackos, President of Comtech Services Inc. and Director of The Center for Information Development Management (CIDM), was recently interviewd by The Globalization Insider about the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). Here’s a quick peek at what Hackos had to say about DITA.

Insider: “Why should every localization customer and services provider start using DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) today?”

Hackos: “We believe that DITA is a rapidly emerging standard that is attracting the attention of many information providers. We also believe that it is the best approach for every organization that wants to increase productivity and decrease costs. However, DITA is an approach that requires considerable collaboration and discipline among authoring groups. It should be studied and adapted to the needs of each organization.”

“Using XML markup does not make your information structured. Most technical content today must be rewritten to become structured. As a result, a move to DITA, while technically fairly straight forward, is challenging. There is no easy conversion tool that will turn threaded, unstructured content into a structure that is semantically or lexically marked.”

To find out what else Hackos had to say about structured authoring, globalization, and DITA, read “Are You Prepared to Meet the Global Information Management Challenge?” by Rebecca Ray, Managing Editor, The Globalization Insider.

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