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Corporate User Technologies Feedable, portable, mashable, DITAble March 2008 © 2007, 2008 IBM Corporation Feedable, portable, mashable, DITAble Michael Priestley, Lead IBM® DITA Architect March 2008

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DITA XML and Web 2.0: making Web 2.0 content portable and mashable using open standards for content and collections

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Page 1: Feedable, Portable, Mashable, DITAble

Corporate User Technologies

Feedable, portable, mashable, DITAble March 2008 © 2007, 2008 IBM Corporation

Feedable, portable, mashable, DITAble

Michael Priestley, Lead IBM® DITA ArchitectMarch 2008

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© 2007, 2008 IBM Corporation2 Feedable, portable, mashable, DITAble March 2008

Overview

What is DITA?

What about Web 2.0?

The problem

The solution (or part of it)

Scenarios: DITA and Wikis

Scenarios: DITA and mashups

Insights

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© 2007, 2008 IBM Corporation3 Feedable, portable, mashable, DITAble March 2008

What is DITA?(the Darwin Information Typing Architecture)

It’s an OASIS standard for designing, authoring, and publishing modular information, such as technical publications, help sets, or Web sites

It’s a markup language:topics for content, maps for collecting and publishing content

And it’s an architecture: specializing to create new types of topics and maps, with inheritance of existing processing

Supported by an open-source toolkit, a wide range of products, and an active community of users

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© 2007, 2008 IBM Corporation4 Feedable, portable, mashable, DITAble March 2008

Vendor response http://dita.xml.org/products-services

"PTC expects that by the end of 2008, up to 80% of all new XML publishing installations will be based on DITA."  From PTC news release on Arbortext(R) 5.3.

"Nearly 50% of the respondents estimated they reuse their content and are investigating the implementation of DITA within their organization.”From results of web survey by Astoria Software.

And others: Elkera, Doczone, DITA Storm, in.Vision…

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Why DITA?

Information quality (MasterCard, Avaya, Business Objects, Sybase, RIM)

Reduced translation costs (IBI, RIM, ATI/AMD)

Ability to reuse across products/product variants (Adobe, Nokia, IBM, Sterling Commerce, Teradata)

Speed in responding to changes

Flexibility in responding to organizational change (Teradata, IBM)

Better management of workload (IBM, IBI)

Ability to specialize to meet domain needs (Siemens Medical, Nokia, Kone)

Ability to reuse across kinds of content (marketing, education, support…) (Business Objects, Nokia, IBM)

Ability to reuse across companies (Siemens Medical, IBM)

Vendor independence (because open standard)

Ease of incremental adoption (Comet, Schlumberger, RIM)

From an informal survey of DITA users at recent conferences

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An open standard for architected content

Navigation

– DITA maps manage relationships among topics

– Tables of contents, site maps, related links…

Metadata

– Can be managed at topic level (content) or map level (collection)

Content

– DITA topics, which can be specialized to support specific information types, for example DITA task

– Separates core content from metadata and links

Eclipse help

JavaHelp

HTMLHelp

Web pagesBooks & PDFs

Learning

Write BuildArchitect

Information Architecture

Map

BuildMaps

Topics Outputs

Eclipse help

JavaHelp

HTMLHelp

Web pagesBooks & PDFs

Learning

Write BuildArchitect

Information Architecture

Map

BuildMaps

Topics Outputs

Write BuildArchitect

Information Architecture

Map

BuildMaps

Topics Outputs

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© 2007, 2008 IBM Corporation7 Feedable, portable, mashable, DITAble March 2008

What about Web 2.0?

“Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means.”

-- Tim Berners-Lee (that guy who invented the Web)

“Web 2.0 … refers to a perceived or proposed second generation of Internet-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies —that

emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.”

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

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Pick 2

Wikis – Create content collaboratively

Blogs

Social networking

Mashups – Combine content from multiple sources

Folksonomies

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© 2007, 2008 IBM Corporation9 Feedable, portable, mashable, DITAble March 2008

Why Wikis and mashups?

Powerful enterprise tools

Enable fast, easy, open collaboration on content using Wikis

– Create new content quickly

Enable fast, flexible development of tactical applications using mashups

– Leverage investment in trusted content/data

Easier collaboration, faster innovation

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The problem with Wikis...

Content is unstructured

– There may be templates and implied semantics, but no validation

Content is non-standard

– Moving content out of a Wiki – even between Wikis – is hard

Content is tangled

– Selecting a subset of content results in broken links

? ??

??

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The problem with mashups...

Sources of content aren’t standard

– Every new source means a new widget or control

Mashups aren’t standard

– Can’t share mashup definitions with other applications or even other mashup engines

Mashups don’t stack

– Every new mashup is a new source of non-standard content

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Sum: Wikis don’t mash well

Faster creation of silo’d content

Faster creation of redundant content

Faster creation of more content you can’t reuse

? ??

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Standard solutions

XML:

– Separate content from application

– Then share content across applications

DITA:

– Standard content sources emphasizing reuse

– Stackable collection standard – let collections reuse collections

– New content types and collection types work with existing applications

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Scenarios

Wikis

– Create DITA, publish to Wiki

– Create DITA, feed to Wiki

– Create DITA, port to Wiki

– Create Wiki, feed to DITA

– Create Wiki, port to DITA

– Or: a native DITA wiki

Mashups

– With standardized sources

– With added semantics

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Create DITA, publish to Wiki

DITA remains source

Wiki is published out to provide forum for comments on source

Example: maintain common source for multiple Wikis:

– Different audiences

– Different products

– Different platforms

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Wiki published from DITA - example

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Create DITA, feed to Wiki

DITA remains source

Surface some DITA content in specific Wiki contexts

Disable editing in Wiki for just the derived topics

Example: tech support database

– When answer moves into product docs, replace tech support doc with feed from product doc

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Create DITA, port to Wiki

DITA stops being source

Use as seed content for new cycle of development

Example: collaborate on scenarios for proposed features in new product

– Port previous release’s scenarios from DITA to wiki

– Collaborate until design approved

– Then port back to DITA to track approvals, changes, etc. and add reuse/conditionality

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Create Wiki, feed to DITA

Wiki remains source, but makes Wiki source reusable by DITA applications

Gets rid of dangling links, formalizes semantics

Does not provide validation, conditional processing, advanced DITA features

Example: OLPC reuse of Wikipedia content into class curriculum (proposed design)– Export/feed specialized topics for

different article types– Export/feed wiki slices to DITA maps– Allows integration of content across

multiple Wikis/repositories– Allows specialized processing for

specific article types (eg biology)

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Create Wiki, port to DITA

DITA becomes source

Example: After brainstorming to create newscenarios, move into DITA for formal use

– Begin topic analysis and associate requirements, tasks, features etc.

– Begin reusing – identifying parts of scenario that apply to multiple products, etc.

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Or: a native DITA wiki

Feed back and forth between systems with no loss of semantics

Port content to the system that meets its needs easily, reliably, repeatably

Integrate with new systems quickly based on shared content standards

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Mashup scenarios

With standardized sources– Combine Wikipedia country

information with specific city articles, tourist sites, Google maps, and WikiTravel notes – based on title keywords

– Generate printable PDF with index, TOC – custom travel guide; or create a hyperguide you can use on your phone/PDA

With added semantics– Educational: Generate lists of

countries by population density (combining population and area)

– Recreational: Create a “see” list for European capitals

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DITA mashup example

IBM® Custom Content Assembler

DITA feeds for Lotus® product documentation

Dynamic publishing for user-selected and –organized topics

User-created collections are themselves searchable and reusable

Collection includes DITA standard content types plus DITA specialized content for learning/training, plus DITA metadata wrappers for multimedia/Flash

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Dynamic content delivery – DITA feeds

Content

Publish

Community

Topics

Maps

by 234 users

Web ServiceWeb ServiceApplications consumingApplications consumingHTTP responsesHTTP responses

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© 2007, 2008 IBM Corporation

DITA feeds: subscribable, organizable, taggable

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Find the topics you want

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Create the book you want

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Insights

Lots of different types of content in Wikis

Range of formality/structure, range of mechanisms for enforcing

Not a single type of content: a phase in the content lifecycle

As requirements change over time, let content move to the application that best supports those requirements

The conflict between structure and collaboration is resolvable

All you need is standardized modular content

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other

DITA as a common currency

DITA preserves semantics and structure through a feed

Provides scalable semantic bandwidth – same feed can be used by both low-semantics and high-semantics applications

Preserve investment in structure and semantics, even add semantics through DITA maps

Validate, integrate, automate

DITA other

RSS – throws away structure/semantics

DITA DITA

Hybrid

Semistructured

ATOM+DITA – preservesstructure/semantics

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A semantic ecosystem:feedable, portable, mashable content

2. Draftcontent

3. Review/edit

4. Approved content

1. Design content

5. Public infocenter/

wiki 6. Articles/new content

7. Techsupport

B. Designartifacts

C. Solutionartifacts

D. Developer/partner artifacts

A. Externalsources

Taxonomies

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DITAble: use, reuse, specialize, collaborate

blogs

CMSs books

Websites

wikis

DITA

Across tools and silos

– Standards-based reuse even across customized solutions/tools – allows specialized solutions, still supports content interchange

Across views and output types

– Separates content from metadata and navigation, allows use of content for different purposes

Across communities and industries

– Integrate information from multiple sources (structured topics, design documents, blogs…)

– Share infrastructure across multiple industries (retail, government, software…)

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The DITA community

OASIS DITA Technical Committee now working on DITA 1.2

– http://oasis-open.org/committees/dita

– Tool vendors (Adobe, Idiom, In.vision, Ixiasoft, Justsystems, Lionbridge, Mekon, PTC, RSI, Syntext, Siberlogic, XyEnterprise…)

– Consultants (Comtech, Innodata-Isogen, Mulberrytech, Rockley, Flatirons, Comet…)

– Users (BMC, Business Objects, Boeing, Freescale, Gambro, IBM, Intel, Lucent, Nokia, Novartis, Oracle, US DoD, Sun, RIM, STC…)

– Subcommittees: Semiconductor industry, Machine industry, Learning and Training, Translation, Enterprise Business Documents, Online Help...

DITA-OT as Open Source on SourceForge

– http://dita-ot.sourceforge.net

– Reference implementation – continuing to improve with many contributors

– Plugin architecture for new capabilities and specializations

DITA focus area and Wiki: http://dita.xml.org

– Michael Priestley’s blog: http://dita.xml.org/blog/25

DITA users mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users

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Backup

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DITA and the Web

The Semantic Web

The Structured Web

The Social Web

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DITA and the Semantic Web

The Semantic Web

– Formal expression of concepts and relationships within a given knowledge domain

– Ontologies, taxonomies, metadata and relationships

The problem

– Requires special skills and knowledge to create

– Typically not part of authoring process – so content may be at odds with ontology, or out of synch

The opportunity

– Simplify the problem: integrate metadata management with the authoring process

– Consolidate formats: use DITA maps to manage relationships and metadata for shareable content, DITA topics for definitions

– Specialize: create special-purpose map formats for particular problem areas

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DITA and the Structured Web

The Structured Web

– The convergence of structured authoring and information architecture

– Adding structure and semantics to the way information is designed, organized, and delivered

The problem

– Requires specialized skills and tools to create structured content

– Information architecture gets out of synch with content

The opportunity

– Simplify the tooling: use DITA as common base for structured content

– Integrate processes: keep information architecture relevant by making it part of delivery architecture using DITA maps

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DITA and the Social Web

The Social Web

– Easy to create content, collaborate, and manage relationships

– Easy to build new applications

The problem

– Hard to move content between systems – content can easily become silo’d

– Hard to integrate structure – most content is lowest common denomenator

– The content assets are out of the reach of existing business processes and applications, such as workflow, translation, etc.

The opportunity

– Standardize content: Use DITA to integrate/share/move content between systems, reduce translation and republishing costs

– Support specialization: Structure and semantics at source allows robust integration with enterprise processes, like regulatory workflows, legal requirements

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DITA: Reconciling three web models

Social web

Structured webSemantic web

Wikis, blogs…

structured content and collections….

folksonomies, tag clouds…

formal taxonomies…

Generic topics and metadata

Specialized topics and maps

Specialized maps and metadata

DITA