DITA – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality

1. DITA – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality 7th Workshop “Software Engineering Education and Reverse Engineering”, Risan, Montenegro, 8 – 15 September 2007 Sam Joachim

2. Agenda • Motivation of this talk • DITA – History & Background • DITA – short system overview • Teaching Material Repository: Current state & future work 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

3. Language variants English Version 1.1 English Version 1.6 English Version 2.0 Language variants Language variants Starting point - JCSE • Distributed, mainly independent development of PPT slides: there are different independent Versions (in different language variants) originating from more or less one source • High effort in maintenance and for developing new materials / tailor materials for another auditorium 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

4. History of last workshops: ‚Authoring by Aggregation‘ process Main Idea: Learning Objects should be divided into reusable modules or fragments. 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

5. o e s Shapes, Slides, Pictures, Textfields e e e t s n t y s n s w w y Associated Slides g Topic Section JCSE Course n History of last workshops:Learnativity Content Model (Duval & Hodgins 2003) 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

6. Author Author Author External content Courses Authoring environment import export Local file system Local file system Repository Meta data Learning Objects History of last workshops: Authoring systems for teaching materials for groups of authors 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

7. Author Author Author External content Courses o ? Authoring environment import export e s e e e t s n t Local file system Local file system y Repository s n w s w y Meta data Learning Objects g n Some questions emerged • Authoring environment: • Structure • Properties / Features • Workflow • Data representation of • the material 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

8. Desired target state: Architecture Online Browser local authoring tools Offline Authoring environment Browser / Eclipse Authoring environment Teaching material repository Teaching material repository (local) local authoring tools Metadata DB Repository DB Synchronization Synchronization Repository DB Metadata DB 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

9. .doc Ahyco .pdf Automated. Some AI? Interactivity. Some NI .ppt Essence Half-baked essence Final document Moodle Tool 2 Tool 3 Tool 4 Tool .ppt Slides eLesson What is the essence? Text? Pictures? Style? XML? . . . . . . Something Teaching / Learning Object or Material Repository Schematic Workflow Process (Ravda 2006) Interactiv „Authoring by Aggregation“ process uses fragments/modules to generate new material (Semi-) Automatic generation of “Raw media objects“ (Semi-) Automatic grouping of connected objects Raw data and media elements in XML format Objects in some Teaching Material Language (LMML /<ML3>) knowledge grid Information objects (groups of objects, graphics) 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

10. DITA Data Representation:Core: DITA as basic data format Versioning of slides / objects / fragments Input from different versions e.g. in different languages  New slides? Changed slides? Changed objects? .ppt Transformation (both directions) Graphical presentation (color, fonts, shapes corporate identity) • Aspects concerning localizing • separated management of language specific elements Different slide formats (.ppt, .pdf (1, 2, 6), Lecture Notes) 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

11. Advanced features: • Translation support with Translation Memory Systems • Creation of teaching objects • for new courses • different combinations of existing material • Different output styles • Textbook, .ppt, .pdf (Slides: 2on1, 6on1), .html, … • Building new material with respect to dependencies of existing learning objects 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

12. Agenda • Motivation of this talk • DITA – History & Background • DITA – short system overview • Teaching Material Repository: Current state & future work 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

13. DITA – Abbreviation & Overview The Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an XML architecture for producing and reusing technical information. DITA developed by IBM: • 3rd May 2005 DITA 1.0 OASIS Standard • 31th May 2007 DITA 1.1 OASIS Standard DITA features: • Scalable reuse • you can reuse content in any number of delivery contexts simultaneously without complicating the source • Single Source Publishing • Interchangeability • you can treat specialized markup as if it were general • getting reuse of tools and processes 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

14. Manuals, reports, catalogues Web SSP data source Online help Slide presentations What is Single Source Publishing ? Why Single Source Publishing ? • There is a trend toward publishing content in different media • In a manual way: time-consuming, error-prone and expensive How does SSP work? • Content is managed in a single location / source • From this source: generate specialized content for different target media en detail: • Content is divided in information e.g. paragraphs, sentences, graphics • These information: - are produced only one time - are administrated in a single place - can be reused - can be used to generate output in different media 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

15. Single Source Publishing Example: DB2 installation manual • Different roles and needs in the documentation lifecycle • Project manager • Has to manage huge amounts of documentations • Administration of dependencies in these documentations • Version management • Technical Writers • Authoring tools for producing documentation • User • Different target media e.g. HTML, PDF, RTF The Installation manual for DB2 appears in different scenarios / documentations: • Standalone Database • Content Management System • Lotus Notes • DB2 Intelligent Miner consistency 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

16. Single Source Publishing – pro & con con • much more design complexity because reuse has to be planed respectively information has to be structured carefully • use of tools is very necessary for producing, administrating and combining the information blocks • staff has to work with new technique pro • reuse of information • reduction of creation time and costs • constantly changing information  decreased cost for maintenance, review and translation • consistency in the whole documentation (content and design) • no redundant information • faulty information can be avoided more easily because changes occur only in a single place (no copy & paste) • changes affect always all documents (e.g. header) • all in all,this points can improve the quality of the documents 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

17. Agenda • Motivation of this talk • DITA – History & Background • DITA – short system overview • Teaching Material Repository: Current state & future work 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

18. What is DITA? • The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. • DITA divides content into small, self-contained topics that can be reused in different deliverables. • The extensibility of DITA permits to define specific information structures and still use standard tools to work with them. • The ability to define group-specific information architectures enables DITA to support content reuse and reduce information redundancy. 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

19. Basic concepts in DITA Topic: • A topic is a unit of information with a title and content, short enough to be specific to a single subject or answer a single question, but long enough to make sense on its own and be authored as a unit. Map: • DITA maps are documents that collect and organize references to DITA topics to indicate the relationships among the topics. They can also serve as outlines or tables of contents for DITA deliverables and as build manifests for DITA projects. 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

20. Other features of DITA • Tailoring DITA / inheritance: • Topics and maps can be specialized according to the actual needs • New element definitions are derived from existing ones • Comparatively easy syntax and known structures (XML, .html) • Built-in support for multi language documents by using language typed strings 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

21. Example: Topic03.ppt <reference id="Folie3“> <title>Process models: used terminology</title> <refbody> <section> <ul> <li>Software process models</li> <li>Phase models</li> <li>Life cycle models</li> <li>Software development models</li> <li>Project models</li> </ul> <note>(Note: terms are …</note> </section> </refbody> </reference> 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

22. Agenda • Motivation of this talk • DITA – History & Background • DITA – system overview • Teaching Material Repository: Current state & future work 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

23. Basic idea • Slide as a specialisation of a DITA topic: ‘slide_topic’ • ‘slide_topic’ consists of the elements of the slides • Layout information is kept in a separate style sheet • individual layout of slides (save original .ppt layout) • Change standard design for other output formats • A whole ppt file is represented as a specialisation of a DITA map 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

24. Current state: PPT ‘Com Add-Ins’ for • Transforming ppt to DITA + stylesheets • Transformation DITA  PPT • Changing layout / appearance of the material 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

25. Original Rebuild from DITA Actual state problems: • Changing fonts in a paragraph • Direction of lines • Transparent colors • Tables & pictures 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007

26. Sources OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Language Specification: http://xml.coverpages.org/DITAv10-OS-LangSpec20050509.pdf OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Architectural Specification: http://xml.coverpages.org/DITAv10-OS-ArchSpec20050509.pdf OASIS DITA Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita DITA open source kit (http://dita-ot.sourceforge.net/) Michael Priestley, DITA XML: a reuse by reference architecture for technical documentation, Proceedings of the 19th annual international conference on Computer documentation Don Day, Erik Hennum, John Hunt, Michael Priestley, David Schell, Nancy Harrison: An XML Architecture for Technical Documentation: The Darwin Information Typing Architecture DeveloperWorks site: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-dita1/ XML Cover page DITA: http://xml.coverpages.org/dita.html "DITA for DocBook: Implementing the Darwin Information Typing Architecture for DocBook." "An XML-Based Information Architecture for Learning Content, Part 1: A DITA Specialization Design. Use DITA XML to Develop Reusable Learning Content.“ "An XML-Based Information Architecture for Learning Content, Part 2: A DITA Content Pilot. Use DITA XML to Develop Reusable Learning Content."    John P. Hunt, Robert Bernard "How Global Companies can Close the Globalization Gap DITA." Idiom Technologies, Inc. 'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007