Absolutely agree, just checking we're not getting ahead of ourselves here...
On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Mathias Bauer <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Simon, > > that's the question that needs to be answered. So far we just discuss > from a technical POV. > > Nevertheless it should be seen that currently we have nothing except a > home brewn set of macros that never has been used outside of the Hamburg > lab (AFAIK). Whoever will be the people to create help content, they > might see DITA as an improvement, because everything is better than > nothing. Frank pointed to some possible problems with existing content, > and I for myself see a problem with the help content provider and the > existing tool chain, but that could be checked once we will have found > out what people want to use. > > Regards, > Mathias > > On 07.07.2011 12:59, Simon Phipps wrote: > > > Is this something that the committers actually planning to do the work > want? > > It's not been clear to me which of the voices of this thread are among > their > > number. > > > > Cheers > > > > S. > > > > > > > > On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 10:10 PM, Rob Weir <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> Would it be worth considering using DITA for the documentation/help? > >> > >> I love ODF as much as anyone, but DITA was designed specifically for > >> technical documentation, and has built-in facilities for making > >> modular "topics" that then can be reassembled, with a "map" to > >> assemble larger works. This gives you the ability, for example, to > >> have paragraph that only shows up in the Linux version of the doc, but > >> not in the Windows version. > >> > >> You also get an easy ability, via the DITA Open Toolkit (which is > >> Apache 2.0 licensed), to transform the DITA source into a large > >> variety of output forms, including: > >> > >> HTML > >> PDF > >> ODT (Open Document Format) > >> Eclipse Help > >> HTML Help > >> Java Help > >> Eclipse Content > >> Word RTF > >> Docbook > >> Troff > >> > >> The authors focus on the structure and content, and the layout and > >> styling is deferred until publication time. So you have a great deal > >> of flexibility for targeting the same content to various uses. > >> > >> The other nice thing is that DITA is text (well, XML specifically), so > >> we use SVN to manage the content, can do diff's, merges, use the > >> editor of our choice, etc. > >> > >> I'd like to argue for the advantages of DITA as a source format here. > >> I can probably find some volunteers to help enabled this. The > >> Symphony team uses DITA for doc/help, and we've already done the work > >> of converting much of the OOo help to DITA. > >> > >> -Rob > >> > > > > > > > > -- Simon Phipps +1 415 683 7660 : www.webmink.com
