DITA was developed on Arbortext
When it comes to DITA, PTC has a history of being first: PTC was the first to deliver a complete DITA solution. As the first vendor to support DITA at IBM, the first vendor to support DITA editing, and the only vendor to participate as a founding member of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee, PTC has led the way for DITA adoption. PTC continues its history of firsts by becoming the first vendor to deliver a complete, fully integrated end-to-end solution for DITA.
DITA for content delivery
If you are using or planning to use XML for publishing technical documentation, you will encounter DITA sooner or later. DITA is one of the most important innovations in XML publishing in years.
What is DITA?
Short for “Darwin Information Typing Architecture,” DITA is an IBM invention that the company contributed to the community under the auspices of OASIS. DITA is an architecture based on XML for publishing technical information, and you can think of DITA as having three distinctive characteristics:
- DITA is a data model – In other words, DITA defines a DTD and an equivalent Schema that prescribe which tags you may use. What makes DITA unique is that you create your own tags using a mechanism called “specialization” that requires you to define new tags by basing them on existing tags.
- DITA is a methodology for reuse – Unlike book-oriented approaches to data modeling, which lead authors to continue writing information in a monolithic form, DITA is a topic-based approach to authoring that leads authors to write small, standalone modules that can more readily be reused in multiple document types.
- DITA is an information architecture – To communicate information with the greatest effectiveness and efficiency, DITA defines an approach to writing and presenting information that embodies decades of experience. DITA specifies that technical information be classified as a Concept, Task or Reference, which guides authors to write more specifically with the fewest possible words.
An integrated solution is critical to realizing the key benefits of DITA, which include:
- Support for information sharing within workgroups, across the organization, and even across multiple organizations
- Higher-quality content with support for a standard information architecture that enables faster writing and faster comprehension
- More reuse of both content and application code
- Lower training costs
- Reduced time/costs of application development and maintenance
Why DITA?
- Easier application development and maintenance
- Faster author training
- Better information reuse and sharing
Arbortext has everything you need for DITA
Single-Sourcing Solutions provides software and services to support the implementation and operation of a DITA-based publishing system.
Only PTC’s solution for DITA provides access to all these capabilities:
- DITA 2.0
- Conversion capabilities for legacy content
- Complete authoring support for maps and topics
- Link management
- Integrated support for review and approval cycles
- Conditional text to produce documents that meet the needs of individual readers
- Reuse of content across multiple documents
- Integrated functionality for content management
- Localization
- Rich publishing capabilities for any media, including print and electronic
Because the PTC Arbortext solution for DITA is fully integrated, all of the components are built to work together out of the box. Everything is tested together, deployed together, and upgraded together. In other words, we've done the work of building the system so that you don't have to. With the fully integrated Arbortext solution, you get:
- Easier deployment and maintenance
- Greater scalability
- Enhanced stability
- More reliability
- Better long-term performance
Arbortext has been part of DITA since the beginning
- PTC Delivers First Arbortext Solution for DITA (originally published in 2006)
- PTC Arbortext fully-integrated DITA solution (originally published in 2006)
- DITA—4 Letters you need to know (originally published in 2006)
- 10 Secrets to a successful DITA implementation (originally published in 2007)
- PTC uses DITA for Product Documentation (2007)
PTC uses DITA and Arbortext for it's own product documentation
PTC successfully implemented Arbortext solutions and the DITA schema within its own operations to optimize its publishing and documentation processes–saving time, effort and money.
Read the whitepaper
Where are they now? A series case studies.
Liz Fraley
How DITA Transformed Content at Nikon Precision [Arbortext User Meeting]
Debra West-Maciaszek, Nikon Precision
Club Car Accelerates Global Customer Satisfaction
Case Study (whitepaper)