Trippe on DITA: Yes, You Still Have to Model Your Content

In DITA Lets Tech Publishers ‘Eat Their Cake’ (Intelligent Enterprise), Bill Trippe writes: “The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is finally pushing aside roadblocks that have stood in the way of adopting XML-based publishing.”

The article addresses (briefly) the often avoided issue of content modeling (some writers think adopting DITA means they don’t have to model their content—a fallacy). It also points out what many consultants have been saying: DITA requires customization (called ‘specialization’ in DITA lingo). There are significant costs associated with specializing DITA that may make it the wrong choice for some organizations. Trippe doesn’t address this issue in the article, but does a good job of pointing out that organizations considering DITA need to carefully analyze their requirements before jumping in head first.

Filed under: DITA : Lessons Learned : Technical Writing