Nina wrote: >I wonder if/how the LibreOffice documentation could take benefit from DITA. Has this been considered/discussed already?
What has been periodically discussed, is listing topics for which articles of 500 - 5,000 words, as appropriate, are written. The idea being that the articles could be massaged for the specific output media format. In theory, this would mean documentation was consistent across media formats, and, when the base article was updated, it would ripple throughout the documentation universe. In practice that hasn't has happened. I'd hazard that the following are the primary reasons why that hasn't/won't happen: * Topic Completeness; * Document reuse is, at best, non-trivial; * This is not how ODF Authors has historically created documentation; Topic Completeness Going by the Design Survey for Draw, the following are the most common uses for Draw: * Creating diagrams; * As an MS Visio replacement; * Schemas; * PDF Editing; * Network diagrams; * Flowcharts; * UMLs; * Drawings; * Block Schemas; * Block Diagrams; * Algorithms; * Vector image editing; Will an article that describes how to do Block Schemas with Draw, suffice for those that want to know how to do a Block Diagram? Will a how-to for UMLs suffice for algorithms? Equally problematic is appropriate indexing. One can write a great article describing how to create and use Radar Charts with Calc, but will it occur to anybody to also index the article under Star Plots, Spider Charts, Polar Charts, or any of the dozen other names used for that type of chart? Document Reuse is Non-trivial Every type of media has its own set of editing and layout requirements. * The purpose of the material affects how it is formatted. By way of example, a psychology research article will be formatted according to _The APA Publication Manual_ guidelines, whilst a research article on the Bible will be formatted according to _The SBL Handbook of Style_; * The target audience affects both vocabulary and syntax. Look at the textual differences between the British and the American edition of any book that was first published in England; *The output format affects how material is put together. Consider the differences between a script for a theatrical play, a script for a film, a script for a radio play, and a script for a TV production; ODF Authors document creation history What is useful, is examining why things are currently done the way that they are. A switch to "topic orientated articles" as a focal point requires a major shift in the creative psyche of ODFAuthors. As far as switching to DITA goes, the first step would be for LibreOffice to be able to import/export to that markup language. Until that happens, adopting DITA is a non-starter, with topic focused articles as being the closest possible adoption. jonathon -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: documentation+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/documentation/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted