Darwin Information Typing Architecture, or DITA is a common requirement we'll see while browsing through the job description of technical writer or information architecure. But would it be really helpful in building up career? Is it worth to invest time or even money to learn? How difficult to learn it? Hopefully this article would contribute a little bit to your decision making.
What is DITA?
This can be a good and short definition: DITA is a single-source documentation management strategy based on XML architecture. It is for designing, writing, managing, and publishing documentation for both printed and web outputs.
So here is the key features:
It is a single-souce strategy for managing documents
It is based on XML code
It involves in the whole documentation lifecycle
It produces outputs for different purposes
Single-source Strategy
One of the greatest thing of DITA is single-source editing, or content reuse. Content reuse allows us to attach a certain piece of information to multiple documents, making the maintenance more efficient, and keep the outputs consistent.
XML-based Structure
XML has many advantages, such as using human language, easy to code, and extendable.
Whole Lifecycle Involving
Adopting DITA is not about choosing a word editor. It is about a concept that starting from the begining of the designing stage, and requires us to keep on the rules and writing guidlines to ensure a satisfying output and to make the maintenance easier.
Multi-purposed Output
The same piece of content can appear in multiple places, for example in an installation manual, a marketing flyer, or on a website. We are able to manage all of them on one point with the DITA structure.
Why learning it?
Though the description of DITA sounds good, but when it comes to a point to decide if I learn it or not, I need some more realistic material to weigh in. Most of our consideration on this topic is:
Is it necessary in real working environment?
Is it required on the job market?
It is quite necessary. It improves technical writing efficiency
DITA can make great contribution to the efficiency and consistency in technical writing by creating and editing the contents on one single file. For example when it comes to an update on version ID, and you have 10 documents contain this version information, instead of update the documents 10 times, you update on one document, from which the other 9 refers this information with DITA.
Many employers require it. It is useful in job seeking
Tech companies today are paying efforts on building a huge variety of documentation for their product to meet different purposes. The top documentation management companies all have employed some management strategies that is suitable for their product development process, such as DITA and Docs-like-code. So knowing DITA is a big advantage when looking for a job.
How to learn it?
Since DITA is actually a mixture of a coding structure and a managing concept, we may get to learn about DITA by two thing: XML architecture and DITA concept. I would recommand to learn about the XML first, because it where this concept is build on.
For learning XML, there are many free online tutorials available. Just follow one and practice on real coding.
For learning the concept, not many tutorial teach about it, but you may find good books and bloggers written by experienced technical writers discuss about it. Here are some of my recommandation:
Book
DITA Best Practices: A Roadmap for Writing, Editing, and Architecting in DITA
Blog
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