ChatGPT explains DocBook vs DITA

ChatGPT is the latest rage in AI. I thought I'd put it to the test, so I asked it: Explain DocBook vs DITA.

Here is the response:

ChatGPT: DocBook and DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) are both markup languages used to create structured content for technical documentation. While they share some similarities, they have distinct differences in their approach to document creation and management.

DocBook is a general-purpose markup language that can be used to create a wide range of technical documents, including books, articles, and manuals. It was developed in the late 1990s and is maintained by the DocBook Technical Committee, which is part of the OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) consortium.

In contrast, DITA is a specialized markup language designed specifically for creating technical documentation. It was developed in the early 2000s by IBM and is now maintained by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee. DITA focuses on creating modular, reusable content components that can be assembled into different documents.

One of the main differences between DocBook and DITA is their approach to content reuse. DocBook provides some support for content reuse through its use of entities, but it is not as comprehensive as DITA's reuse mechanisms. DITA uses a topic-based approach, where each topic represents a modular, standalone unit of content. These topics can be combined and reused across different documents, making it easier to maintain consistency and reduce duplication.

Another difference is their support for different output formats. DocBook has broad support for a wide range of output formats, including HTML, PDF, and EPUB. DITA also has good support for different output formats, but its focus on modular content means that it is best suited for online help systems and other types of documentation that can be assembled dynamically.

In summary, while both DocBook and DITA are markup languages used for technical documentation, they have different approaches to content creation and management. DocBook is a general-purpose markup language, while DITA is specialized for creating modular, reusable content components. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, and the choice between them will depend on the specific needs of your documentation project.

My response: DocBook v5.0 introduced the concept of Assemblies, which resemble DITA Maps, and a topic  type which enables stronger reuse capabilities, similar to DITA.

ChatGPT: Yes, that is correct. In DocBook v5.0, the concept of Assemblies was introduced to improve the management and reuse of content. Assemblies are similar in concept to DITA Maps, allowing authors to create collections of topics and arrange them in a hierarchy to build larger documents.

Additionally, DocBook v5.0 also introduced a new topic type, which allows authors to create reusable content modules that can be used in multiple documents. The new topic type provides stronger reuse capabilities, similar to the topic-based approach used in DITA.

These changes in DocBook v5.0 were designed to address some of the limitations of earlier versions of the markup language, particularly in the area of content reuse. By adopting some of the best practices and concepts from DITA, DocBook has become a more flexible and powerful tool for technical authors and publishers.

My response: Which is better?

ChatGPT: There is no definitive answer to which is better between DocBook and DITA, as the choice between the two depends on a variety of factors such as the specific needs of the project, the skillset of the team, and the intended audience.

DocBook is a general-purpose markup language that can be used for a wide range of technical documentation, including books, articles, and manuals. It has a wide range of output formats and a large user community, making it a good choice for projects that require a lot of flexibility and support.

DITA, on the other hand, is specifically designed for technical documentation and is highly modular, making it a good choice for projects that require a lot of content reuse and maintenance. It also has strong support for online help systems and other dynamic output formats.

Ultimately, the choice between DocBook and DITA will depend on the specific needs of the project and the preferences of the team. It's worth evaluating both options and selecting the one that is best suited for the specific needs of the project.

I found the responses quite accurate and interesting! Radu at oXygen also had an interesting experience with ChatGPT:  https://blog.oxygenxml.com/topics/using_chatgpt_in_a_dita_xml_project.html 

Clear skies, Jeppesen. Hello, ServiceNow!

Today is my last day at Boeing / Jeppesen. I will miss all of my colleagues in Information and Knowledge Services there. I'm excited for my new opportunity at ServiceNow, especially to work with such great folks as Toni Mantych, Tony Morales, and Dawn Bunting. I'm also excited to get to know the rest of the team and make work, work better!

Seattle-area DITA listening session on Jan 24, 2017

Are you interested in DITA want to provide feedback to the DITA community that might have an impact on its future? The OASIS DITA Adoption Technical Committee is extending an invitation to STC members and participants to attend a Seattle-area “DITA listening session” on Tuesday, January 24, 2017, 3:30-6:00 PM.

Where:

Xeditor (inside the Galvanize Building)
111 S. Jackson St.
Seattle, WA 98104

Although members of these Technical Committees interact with DITA prospects and DITA practitioners routinely at conferences and online, we suspect that our picture of how things are actually going for DITA companies is incomplete if we do not have venues for those DITA users and architects who have not had opportunity to attend conferences, local user groups (if they exist), or technical forums. These listening sessions are a form of outreach to DITA people where they live and work. The sessions are an opportunity for the Committee to obtain feedback from current, past and future DITA users. The Technical Committee recently released DITA Version 1.3 and is now assessing what sorts of features and/or capabilities might be important for DITA 2.0. See http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/dita/v1.3/

Session Structures:

30 minute – meet n’ greet and then a 60 minute – attendee roundtable—how is DITA doing at your company?
30 minute – Q&A – OASIS TC members asking attendees
30 minute – Q&A – local attendees asking OASIS TC members
(Optional) Dinner and refreshments at a local watering hole (no host)

On site event but no registration required! Please RSVP by January 20th to:

Anthony Apodaca, Business Development
212 884 9402
a.apodaca@xeditor.com | http://www.xeditor.com 

I'd also like to find someone to host a Redmond/Kirkland/Bellvue-area session on Jan 25. Please let me know if your company would be willing to host!

DITA 1.3 released for Public Review

DITA V1.3 will be released for 30 day Public Review, starting 09 July 2015 at 00:00 UTC and ends 07 August 2015 at 23:59 UTC.
This has been a long journey, but I'm pleased to have been a part of this work. Please see the following links:

• http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/dita/v1.3/csprd01/part0-overview/dita-v1.3-csprd01-part0-overview.html
• http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/dita/v1.3/csprd01/part1-base/dita-v1.3-csprd01-part1-base.html
• http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/dita/v1.3/csprd01/part2-tech-content/dita-v1.3-csprd01-part2-tech-content.html
• http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/dita/v1.3/csprd01/part3-all-inclusive/dita-v1.3-csprd01-part3-all-inclusive.html

Optimizing the DITA Authoring Experience

I'll be giving a webinar tomorrow through the DCL Learning Series on "Optimizing the DITA Authoring Experience". There is still time to register: http://buff.ly/1J5iruk

Highlights from the CMS/DITA NA 2015 Conference

The Content Management Strategies/DITA North America 2015 conference was held April 20-22 in Chicago, Illinois. Over 350 attendees learned best practices in four tracks: Information Design & Development, Technical Solutions, Management, and Emerging Technologies.

As a member of the CIDM staff, I was fortunate to host the Emerging Technologies track and got a chance to learn about a few new technologies, myself! If you missed it, I tried to Live Tweet the key points from each of the sessions here: #cmsconference #emergingtechnologies

Several "game changer" presentations included:

• DITA Glass: Perceive everything as DITA (Radu Coravu, SyncroSoft; George Bina, SyncroSoft
• The dynamic information model (Dawn Stevens, Comtech Services, Inc.; George Bina, SyncroSoft)
• Preparing for Augmented Reality (AR) in technical communications (Rhonda Truitt, Huawei Technologies; Farhad Patel, Huawei Technologies)
• Ipad applications using visual search and Augmented Reality (Pim Bekker, Etteplan)
• Various presentations on Dynamic rendering of DITA

So what was game changing?

The guys at oXygenXML have developed a series of pipeline transforms (Project DITA Glass) that let you, for example, use a topicref (with a special url) to an Excel spreadsheet directly. That URL is transformed on-the-fly directly to DITA, which can then be rendered directly in a table as part of your document! It also can round-trip, so any changes made in the DITA are written back into the Excel sheet.

This is important for those times when you need information from a subject matter expert, but don't want to teach them DITA or have to manually convert their content so you can use it. It's a one-stop shop! They are working on many more transforms. My hope is that they will create one for PowerPoint to DITA for all of the Learning and Training folks out there. Most course developers still work in PowerPoint, but it would be much more powerful to use the DITA publishing tool chains for various outputs while letting the developers still create in their familiar tool.

Another one-stop shop technology is the Dynamic Information Model. Comtech and oXygenXML have partnered together to create an XML-based Information Model, where a company can document their editorial and content structures, while also enabling the automatic enforcement and expression of that Model in the authoring environment! It basically generates the schematron rules and tool tips for authors from the Information Model itself. Very powerful!

A consistent theme in emerging technologies and technical solutions was the dynamic rendering of DITA content (server-side and client-side). There were several approaches presented, but they basically eliminate the DITA-OT publishing step by using CSS+XSL to render DITA content directly or on-demand.

Another particularly interesting theme was presenting technical information in an Augmented Reality environment. In fact, there is a new technical committee being formed at OASIS to address this very subject area! There are some tools available today for creating AR, including DAQRI 4d Studio, Metaio creator and SDK, Wikitude SDK, nGrain. The benefits of this technology include: reduce quality errors, contextual instructions at point of use, remote expert support, increased productivity. AR statistically has been proven to improve first time quality on assembly tasks, with fewer errors. AR can provide procedural steps, along with an overlay of task location, assembly info and more to assist in the completion of a task.

Did you know that by 2020, 103 million cars will be AR-enabled? Are you aware of AR devices, such as Google Glass, Microsoft Hololens, and DAQRI? Now is the time to start preparing your technical content for use with these types of devices. The future is so bright, we need to wear AR shades!

Browser Power plug

Come to the CIDM 2015 CMS/DITA North America conference! I'll be presenting on:

Browser Power: Client-side rendering of DocBook and DITA

What do Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Vivaldi, and Internet Explorer all have in common? Today’s modern browsers can dynamically render DITA and DocBook. Why use a separate rendering step in the publishing process, when the XML can be delivered directly from the server and rendered in any modern browser, including mobile? In this session, you will learn how to customize the browser presentation layer and some of the caveats for the content.

Join CIDM in Chicago, Illinois, April 20-22, 2015 for the 2015 CMS/DITA North America conference, the premier content management event of the year. Meet with your colleagues and build new friendships and relationships.

At 2015 CMS/DITA North America, you'll find a superb line-up of more than 75 presentations and an Exhibition Hall bursting at the seams with the latest technology and product innovations. Each exhibitor offers technologies that help you create content, manage your content store, produce attractive and effective publications, and ensure the quality of what you deliver to customers. Remember, they are anxious to learn about your needs as well. 

Come for the community, experience new insights, and leave with a wealth of new ideas that help you reap the benefits of managing content in your organization. In its 17th successful year, CMS/DITA North America is the premier conference for everyone who manages technical and business content in both small departments and huge global enterprises.

For more information: http://www.cm-strategies.com

DITA Learning in the new Adobe Technical Communications Suite!

Adobe just announced a new Technical Communications Suite, and has included support for DITA Learning!

Full support for DITA standards

Take advantage of DITA 1.1, including support for Bookmap, Indexing, and Glossary specifications, and use the DITA 1.2 Learning and Training Content Specialization (beta) to develop compelling training content.

I'll definitely have to give this a try. The DITA Learning Content subcommittee is in the process of putting together more real-world examples using this standard that we've developed over the past several years. Maybe I'll try to put that together using the demo!

Metadata and Interoperability

Jim Earley has a very thoughtful post on metadata interoperability: http://jims-thoughtspot.blogspot.com/2008/04/metadata-interoperability.html

As part of DocBook v5, we added the ability to include content from other namespaces in the <info> block to support adding Dublin Core directly in your content. The <info> element's purpose is to house metadata that is not intended for display, so it's a really good fit.

Jim's argument, is that the various standards out there (DocBook, DITA, ODF at a minimum) should move to Dublin Core for metadata, and stop re-inventing the wheel. Dublin Core is an internationally accepted standard for metadata, so why not use it directly?!

I whole-heartedly agree. This approach would add more compatibility between standards, and maybe even facilitate better search! Along with that, Dublin Core is extensible, so it shouldn't be too difficult to add additional metadata fields if you need to.

more on DocBook vs. DITA

Teresa Mulvihill has written an article on DocBook vs. DITA at: http://www.dclab.com/dita_docbook.asp.

It's a well thought-out article, but I'd like to make a few clarifications:

As you may know, Jim Earley and I have presented on this topic and our Doc Standards Interoperability Framework at several conferences, and still hope to form an OASIS TC on document standards interoperability.

In the article, Teresa states:

"DocBook is hierarchical by nature, and must be developed to allow for single-sourced content. DocBook has a fixed element and attribute set."

I've successfully used and recommended single-sourcing approaches with DocBook, without additional development. It's quite easy to set up a book or article and use XIncludes or even file entity references to pull in content from a common pool of content structures (usually section or chapter).

It's also fairly easy to extend the elements and attributes in DocBook. This has been made even easier with DocBook v5.0 and RelaxNG. In fact, the DocBook Subcommittee for Publishers that I chair, has helped organize the source patterns for DocBook v5 with a modular approach, enabling easier customizations to be created. Our subcommittee has created a customization geared specifically to publishers, without all of the technical blocks and inlines in full DocBook. This significantly reduces the tag set for folks that do not produce software or technical documentation to use the DocBook standard for general publishing!

DocBook can generate more than PDF, HTML and HTMLHelp. The docbook-xsl-1.73.2 stylesheet distribution supports: html, htmlhelp, javahelp, manpages, xhtml, Word roundtrip, slides and websites!

I would also argue that DocBook can be used on very high volume documentation projects, as well as small and medium projects. Just ask Sun, HP, various Linux distros, and more listed here: http://wiki.docbook.org/topic/WhoUsesDocBook

You might also find Norm's blog on DocBook vs. DITA interesting: http://norman.walsh.name/2005/10/21/dita

We are also working on some exciting developments for the Interoperability Framework, so stay tuned!

DocBook vs. DITA: revisited

The Content Wrangler has published a very interesting article by Dick Hamilton on choosing an XML schema.

I get asked very similar questions all the time! I think I'll start sending folks to this article as recommended reading...

DITA Learning Content accepted for DITA 1.2

More big news in the standards world today! The DITA 1.2 feature proposal #12058, "Design and language specification for DITA learning and training content," submitted by the DITA Learning and Training Content sub-committee was approved at today's DITA TC meeting.

Congratulations to John Hunt and all the members of the DITA Learning Content SC! The specification and sample plugins are all publicly available. Next steps for us is to work on our Best Practices for Implementation and create some sample processing for the DITA OT. This effort will continue into the first quarter of 2008.

DITA Learning Content specialization open for review!

The OASIS DITA Learning and Training Content Specialization Subcommittee is proud to announce the availability of our specification for DITA Learning Content for public review.

The design and language specification for the DITA learning and training content is available here, and the DITA Open Toolkit plugin with working DTD, XSD, DITA content samples, and documentation is available here.

The goal of the subcommittee is to develop a general top-level design for structured, intent-based authoring of learning content with good learning architecture, following DITA principles and best practices.

This specification was formally submitted to the full OASIS DITA Technical Committee today, after we completed the designs, samples, and language specifications for the learning topic types, the learning map domain, the learning interaction domain, and IEEE LOM learning metadata. The intention is to have this specification approved by the TC for inclusion in DITA 1.2, though most of this work is built on the existing DITA 1.1 infrastructure.

Please send any review comments via the public comment facility.

Doc Standards Interoperability Framework whitepaper now available!

Jim Earley and I have presented about the Doc Standards Interoperability Framework at XML 2006, DITA West 2007, Open Publish 2007, OASIS Symposium 2007 and DITA West 2007.

The whitepaper is now available at:
http://www.flatironssolutions.com/downloads/Interoperability_Framework.pdf.
This whitepaper contains greater detail on the business case for interoperability, as well as specifics on the framework. If you are interested in exchanging content between DocBook, DITA, ODF and/or other document standards, you should definitely check it out!

We are still working on the charter for the proposed OASIS Doc Standards Interoperability TC. Hopefully we can get that finished soon to form the TC before year-end.

DITA 1.1 Officially Released!

It's been a lot of work, but we've finally released version 1.1 of DITA! I've been involved heavily in DITA 1.1, as well as the Learning Content specialization subcommittee.

The full press release is available here:
http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis-news-2007-08-13.php

Key features of this release include:

• Enhanced print publishing capabilities with the new DITA Bookmap specialization, including extended book metadata.
• New elements (<index-see>, <index-see-also>, and <index-sort-as>) for "see" and "see-also" references.
• New elements (<abstract>, <data>) for defining structured metadata, as well as the ability to add new metadata attributes through specialization.
• New elements for image scaling.
• The glossary specialization, adding new elements for glossary entries.
• Support for foreign content vocabularies (<unknown> element)

UPDATE: The DITA OpenToolkit 1.4 has also been released, including support for DITA 1.1. For more information, please see:
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=724798

New DITA information resources

Bob Doyle has created several new DITA information resources:

• DITA News is a resource website and industry newsletter.
• DITA Blog - blogs about DITA
• DITA Wiki
• DITA infocenter - a searchable knowledgebase for DITA users
• DITA Users - helping authors get started with topic-oriented structured writing
• DITA Tutor - self paced and instructor led DITA tutorials and workshops

DITA News will also aggregate posts that use the tag DITA. Check 'em out!

Dynamic Publishing with DITA

With DITA's modular, reusable information elements, you can not only publish across different formats and media - but also flexibly recombine information in almost any way you like.

Initial DITA implementations have focused primarily on publishing to pre-defined PDF, HTML and Help formats - basically static publishing with DITA. The real promise of DITA, however, lies in supporting dynamic, personalized content delivery.

At Flatirons Solutions, we've developed a very cool application on top of Mark Logic to enable this dynamic publishing. We've written a whitepaper about it here:
http://www.flatironssolutions.com/Downloads/Whitepaper_DCD_Using_DITA.pdf
This whitepaper defines a new publishing paradigm, which we will call dynamic content delivery. Dynamic delivery changes the rules, putting the reader in charge of what content is important and how it should be packaged. It transforms publishing to an audience of many to publishing to an "audience of one".

What's Inside:

• Static vs. Dynamic Publishing
• DITA: Dynamic Assembly of Topics
• A Scalable Approach to Dynamic Content Delivery
• A Complete DITA Publishing Solution
• Bottom Line Benefits

DITA 1.1 open for public review!

From the announcement:

The OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC has recently approved the following specification set as a Committee Draft and approved the package for public review:

DITA v1.1

• DITA Version 1.1 Specification Overview
• DITA Architectural Specification v1.1
• DITA Language Specification v1.1
• DTDs
• Schemas

The public review starts today, 5 March 2007, and ends 4 May 2007. This is an open invitation to comment.

...

Comments may be submitted to the TC by any person through the use of the OASIS TC Comment Facility which can be located via the button marked "Send A Comment" at the top of that page, or directly at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/comments/index.php?wg_abbrev=dita.

...

The specification document and related files are available here:

DITA Version 1.1 Specification Overview
http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/overview/overview.html

DITA Architectural Specification v1.1
XHTML: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/archspec/archspec.html
PDF: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/archspec/archspec.pdf
DITA: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/archspec/archspec.zip

DITA Language Specification v1.1
XHTML: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/langspec/ditaref-type.html
PDF: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/langspec/ditaref-type.pdf
DITA: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/langspec/langspec.zip

DTDs
http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/dtd/ditadtd.zip

Schemas
http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/schema/ditaschema.zip

Yahoo Pipe for DITA

Bob DuCharme's post encouraged me to try out Yahoo Pipes. Here is the result:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/RJeKx6vG2xGLt4MEfOgC8A

DITA 1.1 approved as Committee Draft!

The OASIS DITA TC has unanimously approved DITA 1.1 as a Committee Draft. The announcement for start of public review from OASIS should come soon.

This is an important achievement, as it includes the long-anticipated bookmap and glossary specializations and the following new extensibility features to the DITA standard:

• A bookmap specialization for encoding book-specific information in a DITA map
• A glossentry specialization for glossary entries
• Indexing specializations for see, see-also, page ranges, and sort order
• Improvements to graphic scaling capability
• Improved short description flexibility through a new element
• Specialization support for new global attributes, such as conditional processing attributes
• Support for integration of existing content structures through the <foreign> element
• Support for new kinds of information and structures through the <data> and <unknown> elements
• Formalization of conditional processing profiles

I will send out the URL to the Architectural Spec and Language Reference when they are posted to the public review site.