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

[John Sgammato]

Remembering Gillian's original question: 

"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 3rd-party scripts, etc."

That's the path I am setting down today. I would very much appreciate experiences and warnings form anyone using TCS4 to publish DITA content to PDF and help. 
I have a bunch of DITA files, and TCS4 with DITA-FMx. It seems I have everything I need to be successful, except knowledge. I can't even find a good book on the subject!

john


On Nov 28, 2012, at 11:45 PM, Liz Fraley <liz at caltonia.com> wrote:

> FYI Both Scott Prentice and Maxwell Hoffman will be hosting a workshop at the upcoming TC Camp in January. Want to get a first hand look at these two conversation threads in a workshop setting? Come to TC Camp:  http://www.tccamp.org
> 
> Liz
> 
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 1:37 PM, Gillian Flato <Gillian.Flato at nexenta.com> wrote:
> Thanks, Scott!
> 
>  
> 
> -Gillian
> 
>  
> 
> From: Scott Prentice [mailto:sp10 at leximation.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 11:27 AM
> To: framers at lists.frameusers.com; Gillian Flato
> Subject: Re: TCS 4 as DITA out-of-the-box solution
> 
>  
> 
> 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 3rd-party scripts, etc.
> 
>  
> 
> Thank You,
> 
>  
> 
> Gillian Flato
> 
> Senior Content Developer
> 
> Skype: Gillian.B.Flato
> 
> Gillian.Flato at nexenta.com
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
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> 
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