TCS 4 as DITA out-of-the-box solution

[Scott Prentice]

Hi Gillian...

As I'm sure you're aware, I'm a big proponent of using Frame for DITA 
authoring, but I do try to remain reasonably objective when comparing it 
to other DITA tools.

The big thing that sets TCS apart from other DITA authoring tools is 
that in addition to authoring, it provides a more complete publishing 
solution for both PDF and various online formats. Other authoring tools 
will likely bundle the DITA-OT as the publishing tool, which can work 
quite well, if you've got XSLT developers at your disposal. The 
HTML-based formats aren't too much work to customize, but if PDF is an 
important deliverable, you're in for a lot of time and money to get 
XSL-FO styleheets built that would be something you'd deliver to your 
customers.

Because TCS includes RoboHelp, you'll find it much easier to get online 
Help from DITA, and you'll be hard-pressed to get PDFs from the OT that 
come close to what you can get from Frame.

Personally, I use Frame for authoring DITA and Oxygen for coding 
XML/XSL. Oxygen is a great tool, but I much prefer the authoring 
experience with Frame over any other tool out there. I publish PDFs from 
Frame (via DITA-FMx), and use the OT for my online outputs (HTML, CHM, 
and EPUB). Samples here ..

     http://docs.leximation.com/dita-fmx/1.1/

If you do decide to use Frame/TCS for DITA, you should check out 
DITA-FMx, which provides numerous additional authoring features, as well 
as makes publishing complete and PDF-ready books much easier than the 
default options ..

     http://leximation.com/dita-fmx/

Cheers,

...scott

Scott Prentice
Leximation, Inc.
www.leximation.com
+1.415.485.1892


On 11/26/12 11:08 AM, Gillian Flato wrote:
>
> I went to a presentation last week given by Maxwell Hoffman from Adobe 
> on TCS v4.x. He stated that TCS v4.x is an out-of-the-box DITA 
> solution that contains DTDs, EDDs, etc, so you don't have to go to 
> third-party solutions to obtain the necessary pieces.
>
> Has anyone used TCS v4.x as a complete DITA solution? Are you liking 
> it? Is it better or worse than using, for example, XMetal or Oxygen 
> with 3^rd -party scripts, etc.
>
> *Thank You,*
>
> **
>
> *Gillian Flato*
>
> *Senior Content Developer*
>
> *Skype: Gillian.B.Flato*
>
> *Gillian.Flato at nexenta.com*
>
>
>

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