DITA solved a fundamental publishing problem: multiple output formats from a single source, especially PDF and Help. DITA’s full potential lies in its ability to support web content delivery. DITA is perfectly suited for dynamically-presented, componentized, web-searchable, socially-enabled, personalized content. What will DITA ‘publishing’ look like in several years? In this presentation we share the emerging vision for DITA publishing and collaboration that we are hearing from real DITA users: - Cloud-based tools will enable authoring, collaboration, and reuse to reach beyond technical publications into marketing, support, suppliers, and ultimately customers. - Centralized DITA repositories will become searchable by internet and enterprise search engines. - On the web, book-style navigation will be replaced by world-class search applications that provide faceted search, suggest related content, connect users and experts, and integrate search results from multiple sources, all through high-quality metadata. - Presentation of DITA content in purpose-built knowledge portals will become the primary publishing channel. - Information developers will evolve into managers of content-centric communities, and will curate more content than they write. - On-demand, personalized deliverables will be easily assembled by non-technical authors to meet their unique needs. This presentation includes real-world examples of next generation publishing concepts, and identifies key areas of change for DITA and related standards.

1. Enabling DITA to Support
the Future of Content Delivery
Considerations for Next Generation Metadata
Paul Wlodarczyk
CEO, Jorsek LLC
4/23/2012

2. Agenda
• A look back: • Next Generation
DITA’s Roots in DITA Metadata
Document – Collaboration
Publishing Metadata
• Current State of – Content Analytics
Metadata
DITA Metadata
– Classification
• Looking Metadata
forward:
• Potential
Dynamic
Standards
Delivery of DITA
Activities for DITA
Content
Metadata
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3. DITA Origins
The DITA standard was developed and
has evolved in the context of static
document publishing to meet the needs
of the technical communications
community.
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4. Current State of DITA Metadata: Publishing
Because of DITA’s origins as a publishing format, DITA metadata
focuses on publishing and publications.
Common metadata elements
The following metadata elements occur in both maps and topic prologs.
Many of the DITA metadata elements map to Dublin Core metadata
(http://dublincore.org/), with the exception of Dublin Core elements such as
title, which maps to the DITA <title> element.
• Publication metadata elements: These elements provide standard
information about the topic as a publication.
• Management metadata elements: These elements provide a basis for
managing the publication process for topics.
• Metadata qualification elements: These elements can be used to provide
additional information about a topic, and may be used in conjunction with
conditional processing attributes to provide more information about the
attribute values.
Source: OASIS DITA 1.1 Architectural Specification - OASIS Standard, 1 August 2007
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5. Current State of DITA Metadata: Classification
DITA 1.2 added mechanisms for classification metadata:
Classification elements
Classification elements support managing metadata. Those in the Subject Scheme map
are used to define controlled values, and to bind them to DITA attributes as
enumerations. Those declared in the classification domain are used in other maps to
classify content according to the scheme.
Subject scheme maps
A subject scheme map is used to define sets of controlled values for use in classifying
content. Sets of controlled values can be bound to DITA attributes. This allows DITA users
to share the controlled values for an information set without having to modify a DTD or
XML schema. The list of available values can be modified quickly to adapt to new
situations, without the need to manage updates to a document type. In addition, DITA
users can define relationships between controlled values and extend a set of controlled
values maintained by another team or organization. The list of defined values are not
validated by basic XML parsers. Instead, the defined values should be validated by DITA
processors.
Source: Overview of the DITA 1.2 Specification, OASIS DITA Technical Committee,19 January 2010
More info: http://www.slideshare.net/IntelligentContent/dita-classificationandsubjectschemej-gelb
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6. Current State of DITA Metadata: Issues
Today it can be challenging to harmonize DITA metadata (in the
prolog, profiling attributes, or subject scheme maps) with CMS
metadata. Here is a good illustrative example:
“The relation between a topic and product components can be
established via topic prolog metadata, internal CMS system
metadata or using an external classification system such as for
example the new subject scheme feature in DITA 1.2. … Today, a
product component is most often scattered across a CMS as folder
names, system metadata, DITA XML metadata, condition values for
filtering, etc..”
Source: Jonatan Lundin, “Is uncertainty making release management difficult?”, dita.xml.org Blog Post 2011-12-28
http://dita.xml.org/blog/is-uncertainty-making-release-management-difficult
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7. DITA for Dynamic Content Delivery
DITA is lean, granular, semantic, and fluid, therefore well suited as a
content delivery format for dynamic information delivery systems:
Portal

8. DITA for Dynamic Content Delivery
DITA is lean, granular, semantic, and fluid, therefore well suited as a
content delivery format for dynamic information delivery systems:
Enterprise
Information
System

9. DITA for Dynamic Content Delivery
DITA is lean, granular, semantic, and fluid, therefore well suited as a
content delivery format for dynamic information delivery systems:
IETM

10. DITA for Dynamic Content Delivery
DITA is lean, granular, semantic, and fluid, therefore well suited as a
content delivery format for dynamic information delivery systems:
Customer
Self-Service

11. DITA for Dynamic Content Delivery
DITA is lean, granular, semantic, and fluid, therefore well suited as a
content delivery format for dynamic information delivery systems:
Dynamically
Assembled
Publications

12. We see the potential for DITA to evolve from its origins as a
publication format to a new role as a content delivery format for
content-centric information systems and applications.
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13. What DITA is Not
DITA needs to evolve so that DITA can meet the dynamic delivery
needs of information developers in the near and not so near future.
With the current state of DITA metadata, however, DITA is NOT
• a content delivery standard
• a data interchange standard
• a metadata standard
• a master data standard
• a web standard
?
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14. DITA for Dynamic Delivery
Dynamic Delivery of DITA content requires standard models for
• Metadata for collaboration
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15. DITA for Dynamic Delivery
Dynamic Delivery of DITA content requires standard models for
• Metadata for classification
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16. DITA for Dynamic Delivery
Dynamic Delivery of DITA content requires standard models for
• Metadata for content analytics
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17. DITA for Dynamic Delivery
Dynamic Delivery of DITA content requires standard models for
• Knowledge representation, i.e. Ontologies
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18. DITA for Dynamic Delivery
Dynamic Delivery of DITA content requires standard models for
• Content delivery and interchange
known issue
new issue
Support
Case Base Support
DITA
Web Self Phone
Support Help Support Email /
Chat
DITA Knowledge Base Support
SME Workflow
social
content
DITA Collaborative DITA
Authoring CMS of Topics
FAQs DITA OT
Procedures
Specs
Best Practices
Tutorials
publications
Customers
Info Dev DITA
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19. DITA for Dynamic Delivery
To enable Dynamic Delivery of DITA source content, presentation
systems and component CMSs will need to represent and exchange
metadata about DITA documents that includes but isn’t limited to
the following:
• Collaboration Metadata
• Content Analytics Metadata
• Classification Metadata and Knowledge Models
Currently these metadata capabilities are gaps, because they are
either:
• Not addressed by the DITA specification,
• Addressed by DITA, but in turn are either
– Redundant with other standards
– Require systems to be DITA-aware
– Or both
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20. Collaboration Metadata
• Use Cases
– Co-authors, SMEs, Reviewers, and End Users provide comments and
proposed revisions to content.
– Authors accept/reject changes
– CMSs track change history
• Examples:
– Arbortext, easyDITA, FrameMaker, MindTouch, XMetaL
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21. Collaboration Metadata
• Pros and Cons of Current Methods
– Proprietary PIs, e.g.:
<?ezd-review-start 1330729595965:comment:johnadamturnbull@gmail.com?>blah blah blah
<?ezd-review-end 1330729595965?>
• Pros: Can span elements. Works. Used by XMetaL, Arbortext, FrameMaker,
easyDITA
• Cons: Can’t be validated by document schema. Non-standard, barrier to
interoperability.
– Draft Comments:
• Pros: In DITA spec
• Cons: Doesn’t comprehend edits – only comments. Use for revisions conflicts
with intended use. Applies to Documents vs. elements. Can’t span elements.
• Need for a Standard
– Standard means of representing proposed edits / annotations to enable
document schema validation, and interoperability between DITA editors,
DITA CMSs, collaboration tools, socially-enabled presentation systems
– DITA Technical Communication SC is actively discussing this topic
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22. Content Analytics Metadata
• Use Cases
– Analytics systems and social channels compile statistics on usage (e.g. page
views / search “hits”) and ratings (stars, thumbs up/down) on content
(analytics metadata) that need to be related to the source content
– Authoring tools and CMSs recognize metadata attached to a component
and be able to render it / act on it (e.g. route, notify)
– Authors view statistics on a component to assess content quality / utility /
relevance
• Examples:
– MindTouch, SuiteShare, SharePoint, WordPress, Facebook, Google, etc.
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23. Content Analytics Metadata
• Pros and Cons of Current Methods
– Proprietary schema is mapped to CMS metadata
• Pros: gets it done.
• Cons: Non-standard relationship to DITA component, so creates a barrier to
interoperability. DITA tools need to be aware of proprietary schema.
• Need for a Standard
– Standard means of representing content analytics to enable
interoperability between content analytics platforms, DITA CMSs, and
social / collaboration tools.
– Need a standard means for attaching metadata with anything ID’d in
DITA, and a standard format (CMIS does this at a resource level, but is
generic and not DITA-aware).
– Less about DITA being metadata-aware, more about non-DITA tools being
DITA-aware (i.e., how to attach metadata to a DITA component – like CMIS
does for a resource)
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24. Classification Metadata
• Use Cases
– Content authors and publishers and classification tools associate classification
metadata with DITA components
– DITA components can be indexed, searched, retrieved, and assembled via
associated metadata.
• Examples
– Suite Solutions SuiteShare; Smartlogic plus SharePoint / FAST / Google / Lucene
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25. Classification Metadata
• Pros and Cons of Current Methods
– Subject Scheme Maps and reltables
• Pros: gets it done.
• Cons: Not widely used, non-
conventional method for
classification and knowledge model
representation (as compared to OWL
or RDF, for example) so not
consumed by search engines.
Requires other tools to be DITA-
aware.
• Need for a Standard
– Standard means of representing / associating component-level metadata
to enable search effectiveness and interoperability between DITA
CMSs, classification tools, and search tools.
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26. Potential DITA Standards Activities
• DITA Metadata Framework
– Much like CMIS does, develop a standard framework for associating metadata with
DITA components . This would provide a mechanism for systems that do not
process DITA to associate classification, analytics, and collaboration metadata with
DITA content.
– Within the scope of current activities of the DITA Web Subcommittee and DiCE
(now inactive)
• Classification Metadata Spec
– Leverage existing work on Subject Scheme Maps to harmonize it with industry
approaches for document metadata (e.g. RDF and Microformats) and knowledge
representation (e.g. OWL)
– Either other systems need to become DITA-aware to consume Classification Maps,
or other conventional approaches like RDF need to be comprehended by the DITA
spec
– Within the scope of current activities of the DITA Web Subcommittee
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27. Potential DITA Standards Activities
• Collaboration Metadata Spec
– Develop a spec within DITA for annotations, either as metadata associated via a
framework or as inline markup
– Within the scope of current activities of the DITA Technical Communication
Subcommittee
• Content Analytics Metadata Spec
– Develop a spec within a DITA metadata framework for analytics
– Recommend exploration by the DITA Technical Communication Subcommittee
• Content Interchange Standard
– Advocacy and adoption effort to get DITA recognized as a semantically rich content
interchange format, and to make non-DITA tools like enterprise systems “DITA-
aware” to enable attaching and processing metadata associated with DITA content
components
– Was DiCE but needs a home….
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28. Questions?
Thank you!
Please visit our booth at the expo.
paul@easydita.com
easyDITA.com
(877) 492-2960
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