TECHS6: DITA and Modular Documentation

The TECHS6 DITA and Modular Documentation course gives an introduction into the wondrous world of single-sourced, modular documentation and the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). The first half of the course introduces you to basic concepts of structured, modular documentation, explains the reasons why someone might want to create modular documentation, and introduces different professional roles found in your average workplace.

The second half of the course focuses on DITA. We’ll first look at the basic principles of DITA and quite quickly start looking at how to produce modular documentation with DITA using Oxygen XML Editor. During the second half of the course, you’ll get to know common DITA concepts, such as:

  • Concept, task, and reference module types and their usage
  • Creating links between documents
  • Creating publications using DITA Map and DITA Bookmap modules
  • Reusing content with conditional text
  • Reusing content with content references
TECHS6 – Luento 7

Viimeisellä luennolla tutustutaan sisältölainojen käyttöön DITAssa sekä tarkastellaan kuinka linkittämistä voi helpottaa tunnisteiden avulla.

Luento

TECHS6 – Luento 6

Luennolla 6 käsitellään julkaisujen koostamista DITA Map- ja DITA Bookmap-moduulien avulla. Luennolla tutustutaan myös sisällön ehdollistamiseen ja sisältölainojen käyttöön.

Luento 6

TECHS6 – Luento 5

Viitosluennolla askarrellaan DITAn Task- ja Reference-moduulien kanssa ja tutustutaan DITA Map -tiedostoihin.

Luento 5

TECHS6 – Luento 4

Nelosluennolla tartutaan Oxygeniin ja ryhdytään kirjoittamaan erilaisia DITA-moduuleja.

Luento 4 Esimerkkitiedostot

TECHS6 – Luento 3

Kolmosluennolla tarkastellaan tapoja, joilla usean kirjoittajan tuottamasta modulaarisesta tekstistä pyritään saamaan yhtenäistä.

Luennolla tarkastellaan myös informaatiomalleja yleisellä tasolla sekä aloitetaan DITAan tutustuminen.

Luento 3

TECHS6 – Luento 2

Toisella luennolla perehdytään modulaarisuuden saloihin. Luennolla tutustutaan modulaarisen ohjetekstin rakennuspalasiin ja tarkastellaan millaista problematiikkaa modulaaristen julkaisujen koostamiseen. Luennolla tutustutaan myös erilaisiin tapoihin hallita modulaarista sisältöä ohjelmistojen avulla.

Luento 2

TECHS6 – Luento 1

Ensimmäisellä luennolla tutustutaan muotoilemattomaan tekstiin, muotoiltuun tekstiin sekä rakenteiseen tekstiin.

TECHS6-2018 – Luento 1

Oxygen XML Videos

Creating a new DITA XML file with Oxygen:

Tags and Views: Adding New Condition Values: Creating Condition Sets:

TECHS6: Lecture 7

During the final lecture, we’ll look into reusing material with content references. We’ll also explore ways of making our DITA content more flexible with key references.

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Lecture Example Content

TECHS6: Lecture 6

Lecture 6 is dedicated to publications and how they are created using DITA Map modules and DITA Bookmap modules. We’ll look at different ways of structuring content into our publications, and take our first look at conditional text and content reuse.

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Lecture

TECHS6: Lecture 5

During this lecture, we’ll look at task and reference modules and their basic structure. We’ll also look at how links work in DITA and how we can link to different types of content from our modules.

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Lecture

TECHS6: Lecture 4

Hands-on introduction to Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). We’ll take a look at what DITA is, what the different topic types are, and get to know how Oxygen XML Editor is best used to create basic DITA topics.

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Lecture Example module

TECHS6: Lecture 3

During this lecture, we’ll take a look at different roles people have in modular documentation projects. We’ll go through different ways of managing the chaos that is modular documentation and learn what style guides are and how they help us manage and present information. We’ll also take a look at infomation models; on what they are, and how they relate to modular documentation.

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Lecture

TECHS6: Lecture 2

Lecture 2 gives an introduction to modular documentation and the concept of modules. During this lecture, you’ll:

  • get to know what modules are and what their purpose is
  • get to know how to build large documents out of a bazillion modules
  • how content management solutions help the poor writers manage the chaos. At the end of the lecture, we’ll have a brief look at different user roles in the modular world.

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Lecture Lecture with answers

TECHS6: Lecture 1

During the first lecture, you’ll get to know the basics of markup languages and structured documentation, and learn how structured documentation differ from the standard what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) authoring model. During the course of the lecture, you’ll meet new friends like tags, elements, and DTDs.

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TECHS6 – Lecture Homework