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A match made in DITA

Contributed by Katie Smrekar

Overview

LavaCon presentation presented by Karen Brothers and Gretyl Kinsey explores how 3M uses structured content through the use of DITA XML. Karen Brothers stressed how technical authors need to focus on both content and formatting which is extremely important to technical communications overall. Brothers discusses how DITA is effective in changing content. A technical writer is able to change specific content across many different documents through the use of DITA. The speakers discuss how to start a pilot project using DITA and Adobe FrameMaker. They chose the content, built the templates, tested the templates and published the content. 3M decided that publishing DITA content through FrameMaker was successful and that 3M can maintain content in DITA. DITA provides reuse and scalability for content. After the pilot project, 3M decided to provide lessons for future DITA use. This pilot project helped 3M to learn that “complexity of layout is much different than complexity of content”, “small does not equal simple”, and “clarify expectations for content creators.”

Key takeaways

Three main takeaways from this presentation for technical communicators is that:

  • Content needs to be clear, consistent, and concise which can be achieved using DITA
  • Content management helps to separate content from formatting
  • DITA is useful in technical communications for editing and reuse purposes

Reflection

This presentation connected with me due to my former role as a Technical Writer intern at Allscripts from May - August 2020 where I learned DITA XML. The formats, or templates, were created using Adobe FrameMaker. When I had worked with DITA XML, I never used templates from Adobe FrameMaker, so I thought it was interesting to see how other companies utilize DITA with other programs. The speakers did mention how DITA XML could be expanded using HTML, InDesign and FrameMaker. I thought it was interesting to see how versatile DITA XML is for structured content. They stressed how both size and scope deeply influence production environments. I think this is interesting to know in terms of Markdown. Overall, I think this presentation gave effective insights.