extreme conditions in dita
DESCRIPTION
An overview of how to manage variant content in DITA. Includes variables (keyrefs), attribute-based conditions, ditaval files, and conref push. PreTRANSCRIPT
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contentstrategy101.com
Extreme conditions in DITAflickr: mikebaird
Sarah O’KeefeScriptorium Publishing
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❖ Founder and president, Scriptorium Publishing, www.scriptorium.com, North Carolina, USA
❖ Coauthor of Content Strategy 101
❖ Interested in collision of content, publishing, and technology
Sarah O’Keefe @sarahokeefe
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❖ Basic conditions
❖ Advanced conditions
❖ Scary conditions
❖ The human element
❖ Surviving extreme conditions
Agenda
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Murky conditional requirements are common
flickr: jaybergesen
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❖ Variables
❖ Short snippet, like a product name, that changes
❖ Conditional information
❖ Needs to be included or excluded
❖ Topic, block, or inline
❖ Graphics and tables
Classes of text variants
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❖ Output
❖ Product
❖ Audience level
❖ Customer type
❖ Customer
❖ and more…
Conditional dimensions
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flickr: jenniferwoodardmadazero
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<map> <title>DITA Topic Map</title> <keydef keys="clientname"> <topicmeta> <keywords> <keyword>My First Client</keyword> </keywords> </topicmeta> </keydef> <topicref href="sample.dita"/></map>
<p>When we deliver this information to <keyword keyref="clientname"/>...
Map
Topic
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Basic conditions
flickr: snowpeak
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<p>This paragraph is for everyone.</p><p audience="advanced">This paragraph is only for advanced users.</p>
<note><p> It's possible to do conditional content at the phrase level<ph platform="badidea">, but it's a really terrible idea</ph>. </p></note>
Paragraph
Inline
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<p audience="expert" platform="windows" product="X">content goes here</p> <p audience="expert" platform="windows mac" product="X Y Z">other content here</p>
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Do not use conditions below the sentence—preferably paragraph—level.
flickr: snowpeak
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flickr: snowpeak
<p>The colo<ph xml:lang="en-uk">u</ph>r of money is a very speciali<ph xml:lang="en-uk">s</ph><ph xml:lang="en-uk">z</ph>ed topic.</p>
Please, for the love of all that is holy…NO.
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<val> <prop action="include" att="audience" val="expert" /> <prop action="include" att="product" val="X" /></val>
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❖ Taxonomy and information architecture much more difficult
❖ Which attributes?
❖ Which attribute values?
❖ How do the attributes combine?
Markup is the small(er) challenge.
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❖ Three attributes out of the box.
❖ Then, you must speciali[s|z]e.
❖ Can limit allowed attribute values through authoring tools or subject scheme maps.
Markup is the small(er) challenge.
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Complex conditionsflickr: ooocha
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<warning audience="ca"> <p> This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.</p> </warning>
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<warning audience="ca"> <p> This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.</p> </warning>
<warning audience="usa-ca"><warning audience="ca">
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<warning audience="usa-ca"><warning audience="ca-en">
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<warning audience="usa-ca"><warning audience="ca-en">
<warning audience="usa-ca"><warning audience="ca" xml:lang= "en-ca"><warning audience="ca" xml:lang= "fr-ca">
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Customers lead to complexity.
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<p audience="army">
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<p audience="army"><p audience="navy">
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<p audience="army"><p audience="army navy">
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<p audience="military"><p audience="army navy"><p audience="usaf"><p audience="marines"><p audience="coastguard">
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And now for the non-U.S. military customer…
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<warning audience="military-us-army"><warning audience="military-uk-army">
<warning segment="military" branch="army" country="us" ><warning segment="military" branch="army" country="uk" >
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Reuse and conditions
flickr: noaaphotolib
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Content references (conrefs)
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<p id="framemaker">We recommend FrameMaker if sophisticated PDF formatting is a critical requirement.</p>
Source
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... <p conref="fm.dita#id/framemaker" conaction="mark"/> <p conaction="pushafter">Using FrameMaker would eliminate the manual formatting that currently takes up so much production time.</p>
<p id="framemaker">We recommend FrameMaker if sophisticated PDF formatting is a critical requirement.</p>
... <p conref="fm.dita#id/framemaker" conaction="mark"/> <p conaction="pushafter">FrameMaker does not support right-to-left languages (such as Arabic), which ClientB needs.</p>
Source
Client A
Client B
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The human element
flickr: danoff
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Surviving extreme conditions
flickr: Bruce Guenter
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Questions?
flickr: cayce
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Contact me
❖ Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium Publishing
❖ www.scriptorium.com
❖ Email: [email protected]
❖ Twitter: @sarahokeefe