DITA/docbook vs your own schema

[Craig Ede]

This distinction between a narrative and topics is a good one. 

 

I just worked through a series of manuals that were written as narratives. There was a lot of repeated content and procedures that were actually four or five procedures mixed together and then occurring later with the mixture slightly varied at other points in the manual.

 

For the content of these operator manuals, the focus on topics both reduced the need for repetition and allowed breaking things down procedures into units were both stand-alone AND understandable. The links to stand-alone topics allowed redefining confusing procedures by allowing the operator to focus on the big picture.

 

For this particular situation, DITA was a logical choice. 

 

BTW: The previous approach had created a maintenance nightmare since changing anything resulted in having to find all the other places where the same or similar text had to change as well. The conversion process uncovered numerous places where such changes had been not been done or was done incompletely.

 

Craig 

 

----snipped-----

IMHO, Docbook vs DITA is a choice between ecosystems. While Docbook is leaning towards the narrative, and DITA towards topics, the differences are getting less pronounced. E.g., DITA is slowly leaving DTDs behind, and Docbook is slowly getting assemblies (maps).

 

 

 

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