DITA is Open for Business

[back]

DITA XML is the new HTML. By the time you finish reading, some new DITA specialization for a business or industry segment will be announced.

The time is right for businesses to seriously consider DITA as their first move into XML content development. Companies no longer have to worry if DITA has staying power because of its broad penetration into industries via specializations and the development of suites and systems that support DITA content development and publishing.

One challenge for managers will be in determining whether there is a need for a specialization or whether standard DITA will provide a usable content model “out of the box.” DITA is deliberately formulated to make adding specialization far easier than the previous process of customizing types of XML content. Thanks to the DITA specialization methods, it is a reasonable strategy to start by creating standard DITA and see if a need arises to specialize it later, for example, to adopt an industry-based specialization. With the right transformations, standard DITA can be made to match whatever specialization is adopted.

Like the HTML standard in the 1990s, the DITA standard is poised today to make changes in the ways companies develop and interchange information. With its maps and ability to use attributes for product, platform, and other important differentiations, DITA makes publishing XML for web, print, and Help documentation faster and more flexible than HTML. Industries are appreciating this power and making DITA an important part of strategies for global content development and deployment.