Introduction
Content is a key part of any business, whether it’s customer-facing material or internal documents. Organizations have to keep up with customer demands in order to stay competitive. In this article, we’ll explore how structured content and in particular, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) XML standard, can help businesses create better content faster, and why it’s becoming the norm for content creation in mid to large sized organizations.
What is structured content?
The separation of content from formatting!
Structured Content allows for semantic creation and tagging of information sets. These tags and the additional metadata that is infused in the content increases the ability to find, reuse, and repurpose content for different applications.
Content written this way is easier to read and understand because it’s organized in smaller sections that are easy to navigate, especially when the output format is a web-based one like HTML.
Structured content can be published to multiple channels and formats at the click of a button including web pages, mobile devices, and printed documents. This is particularly useful as the content can be used by different actors within the organization, or for different purposes. For example, the marketing department can create datasheets from the same content used to create the user manuals. Clinical trials information can be repurposed and used to satisfy registration documents and certification requests.
Many common processes, including indexing, table of contents generation, and version control, can be automated with structured content. By eliminating the need to track changes manually between versions, structure makes it much easier to compare a document side-by-side with a previous version and identify changes quickly. It simplifies the process of creating new versions of a document.
Moreover, structured content is more likely to be accurate and up-to-date, since it is easier to update individual sections without having to duplicate entire documents, especially important for large projects with a lot of moving parts, like manuals or product catalogs.
What is DITA XML?
DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is a set of XML markup languages for authoring and publishing technical documentation. Designed to be flexible, modular, and re-usable, along the structured content model, it allows the creation and management of complex information sets, referred to as topics.
This structure of topics, assembled into maps, serves as the foundation for generating a wide range of output formats, including online (HTML) help, ePubs and PDFs.
The DITA standard is maintained by the OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) technical committee.
As with other component based writing systems, you are able to store all your content in a central repository, whether it’s GIT or a dedicated Component Content Management System (CCMS).
Compared to other XML formats, DITA presents a number of advantages over traditional document creation methods.
What are the advantages of DITA XML for structured content?
Content reusability and modularity
Using DITA XML, you can create structured content once and then reuse it in multiple formats and contexts. This allows you to break down your content into smaller modules that can be reused in different ways. Modular content is easier to understand, update, and translate than unstructured content. It is possible to write a section of a user manual once and then use the same content in a training course or troubleshooting guide. As your content is stored in a central repository, it can be easily accessed for reuse by multiple authors, eliminating the need to recreate it for each new project.
Single-source publishing support
In DITA XML, you can create one source file and publish it to multiple outputs since it is a structured format that uses tags to identify different types of content.
As a result, you can reuse your content across multiple outputs, saving you time and effort in the long run, as well as ensuring consistency across all of your published material.
A single DITA map can be used to generate multiple output formats and languages. You save time and effort, as well as ensure consistency across all channels.
Easier and cheaper translation management
DITA XML’s support for multilingual publishing and translation management can make the localization process easier, more efficient and cost-effective. Reusing translated content reduces translation costs. Since a component is translated only once, there is no longer any need to translate it each time it is reused, or when it occurs in other documents.
In addition to DITA XML’s enhanced support for multilingual publishing, DITA XML also allows you to store your content separately for each language, making it easier to update your translations.
This allows you to manage your translations in a more organized and efficient way, as you can make changes to one language version of the content without affecting the others.
DITA XML also has built-in support for translation-related metadata, such as translation status and translation memory, which can be used to track the progress of translations and ensure consistency across languages. By separating the content for each language, you can also work with specialized translation teams who can focus on one language at a time, which can lead to higher quality translations. Additionally, DITA XML allows for the use of translation memory tools, which can save time and reduce costs by reusing previously translated content.
The ability to format and publish content more easily
Having the ability to format and publish content in a variety of ways becomes increasingly important as content becomes more complex.
As the formatting is centralized, the authors do not need to worry about specific output formats.
PDF or Online? That decision is in the hands of the team of Information Architects, content strategists etc. The author simply has to state what format they require at publication time, for what audience they want to publish, and the right content is pushed to the publication platform or repository. Whether they are reading on a screen or in print, user or service engineer, the author no longer has to think about making formatting changes at publication time.
Content structure that is standardized and well-defined
DITA XML provides a well-defined structure for content that can easily be parsed and processed by automated systems. Standardized structures are essential to efficient workflows in publishing.
By standardizing the structure, processing the content for publication is very fast and efficient. This makes it ideal for large projects with many contributors.
Content structure can be easily customized and extended
One of the most important advantages is the ability to easily customize and extend the content structure to meet specific project or workflow requirements.
A company can create a custom DITA XML schema that only includes the elements and attributes it needs for their particular workflow, for example, if it wants to use DITA XML for technical documentation. All members of the company’s documentation team can then use this customized schema, resulting in consistent and well-structured documents.
The same content can then be used to create learning material by the company’s eLearning team, by simply using the processing instructions embedded in the code.
Terminology and style guide harmonization
Improve the quality, accuracy, and usability of technical documentation. With DITA, you can define specialized terms and jargon centrally, and then use tools and plug-ins to enforce adherence to style guides and agreed terminology throughout the project documents. This ensures consistency in language, tone, and formatting, which makes it easier for readers to understand and use the information provided in the publication.
DITA XML structured content offers an ideal solution for organizations looking to improve the quality and consistency of their documentation.
Pop over to our blogsite for further articles on this and more on content management strategies to improve your organization’s documentation life cycle.
Conclusion
Embracing DITA XML can transform your approach to content management, making your processes more efficient and your content more powerful.
Ready to upgrade your content strategy with DITA XML?
