[Framers] Fwd: Managing Versions of documentation simultaneously

[Robert Lauriston]

The nature of software releases means that the number of conditions
would grow indefinitely. I don't see how this would not eventually
become unmanageable.

DITA (which is just a text markup standard) doesn't make sense if you
don't have a lot more reuse than simply maintaining multiple versions
of a doc. Typically it's cost-effective in large organizations where
multiple products share features (and thus can reuse content in their
docs) and the docs are translated into multiple languages, and in that
context it defines the format for files that are managed by a
compatible CMS, which is integrated with an editor such as Oxygen and
often custom code for generating PDF, online help, static HTML for web
sites, etc.

For a small or medium-sized company, DITA's almost certainly the wrong
choice. Paligo and I believe Author-it provide integrated systems with
similar features. Flare with MadCap Central may also be a practical
and cost-effective alternative.

On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 10:16 AM, Keith Soltys <keith.soltys at tmx.com> wrote:
> I think it would depend on how many simultaneous versions you have to
> manage. I've done something similar in Frame where I had to keep three
> different versions of a document from one set of source files - there were
> different features for different roles, not versions per se, but the
> problem was the same. I did it with conditions - the tricky part was where
> I had overlapping information; for example, something applies to A and B
> but not C and something else applies to B and C but not A. If memory
> serves, I ended up with 14 separate conditionals because I also had
> separate print an online formats to manage. It was doable, but very
> finicky, and I wouldn't do it again if there were more than three major
> variants. (This was before Frame came out with conditional expressions,
> which might have simplified things a little, but it would still be
> finicky).
>
> I have not used it, but I have been told that DITA is a better solution
> here; but I couldn't say whether structured Frame or something like Oxygen
> with a back-end CMS would be better.