DITA to take over the world…
DITA will take over the world… or maybe more like lay under it, as XML does currently.
From my perspective, DITA (or a good part of DITA – there is also the tech doc focus) is the next step in core SGML/XML. IBM started SGML itself, and later had a fair amount to do with XML: now the same sort of people are working on DITA, making XML safe for the world.
DITA extends SGML constructs such as entities with constructs such as conrefs. Everyone loves the idea of re-use of content, but XML 1.0 is a bit too flexible in this regard. It doesn’t say much about *how* you re-use, associate, and aggregate content, thus tools will do the same thing different ways, or won’t support re-use well at all. DITA fixes this, then immediately (concurrently) applies it to Tech Doc.
DITA is based on the practical experience of some IBM tech doc teams and while their goals and requirements were specific to tech doc, many of the core constructs are not.
Similar to XML itself, which is a meta-language (or language for creating languages), DITA has a powerful specialization methodology, that allows for completely custom document structures, yet a backwards compatibility with the core DITA constructs. If your <eBookPara> tag is read by a DITA rendition tool that only knows the <p> of DITA, you will at least get things rendered, though perhaps not in the special “eBook” way that you prefer. At least the tools don’t break.
It is somewhat confusing that the drivers for DITA remain squarely in the Tech Doc space, yet the solution it provides is often fairly universal. Maybe what DITA needs to do is split into the tech-doc specific DITA and the generic DITA, the way XSL split into XSLT and XSL-FO.
I’m 100% in agreement with your thesis, Max. DITA was informed on by the experiences and requirements of the technical documentation community, but designed to be general and extensible at the same time. Today, the end-to-end tools for DITA technical writers offer users a good choice of mature, robust capabilities.
There are many other possible applications for DITA, a few of which are represented by the standing Subcommittees of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee, such as Learning Content, Pharmaceutics, and Machine Industry. I am anxious to see tools and services reach out to the unique needs of those communities, and many others as well.
I expect the DITA 1.2 era will see greater use of refactoring and specialization to adapt DITA for those unique applications. Watch for DITA to be taken up by companies as a content standard across the enterprise, such as for policies and procedures, project records, and white papers.
There are some exciting new uses coming up!
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Don Day,
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee