Template Tutorial - Let's Get Started!!!

[webnetix]

Might not be of any relevance, but considering the Technical Authoring nature of this thread I thought it worth mentioning anyways. A recent project requirement of mine has prompted the development of DITA extensions for the popular Joomla 1.5 CMS.

The DITA4Joomla Project enables the authoring, management and publishing of DITA content through the Joomla 1.5 CMS.

This project is currently under development but contains two available Joomla plugins which extend Joomla to Support DITA content. These plugins include the integration of the DITA Storm Wysiwig editor (excludes the DITAStorm editor, just integration code) and another for server side transformation of DITA content to HTML.

The content on the site is published using the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA).

The project is available at http://dita.webnetix.co.za/

Chiao

[dextercowley]

Hi. I've never heard of DITA but it looks very interesting, and a component for this might be a great addition to Joomla. We're planning on using the Mediawiki for the 1.6 Joomla! help files. Is there a way to convert to/from wiki? Thanks. Mark

[Chris Davenport]

Hi,

I looked at DITA in depth about a year and a half ago when we did a major review of how we wanted to handle documentation for the future. I really like DITA, especially the DITA Storm editor which is really awesome even though it is proprietary (but free for open source projects). I wrote a little plugin back then so it would work as a WYSIWYG editor in Joomla and I was really impressed with how easy it was to use. No doubt it will only have improved with age, but sadly I haven't had time to re-visit it since.

The whole concept of DITA is exactly what we want for documentation; it encourages modular writing and module re-use; and it can act as a single source from which multiple output formats can be generated. The only really major reason we chose to go down the MediaWiki route instead of DITA was that MediaWiki did just about everything we needed it to do right out of the box, whereas with DITA we would need to do quite a bit of development work. In effect we would have had to create a wiki inside Joomla but based on the DITA model. With limited time and a shortage of good developers the choice of MediaWiki was pretty much inevitable.

I'm really keen to see what you can achieve with this. There is no doubt in my mind that DITA in Joomla would make an impressive platform for technical documentation. Please keep us posted on developments and if you need any help just ask. Have you considered putting your code into JoomlaCode and encouraging other developers to join in? If this can be developed into a solid platform we would certainly consider moving the documentation (back) into Joomla.

Regards,
Chris.

[webnetix]

Hey Chris,

Thanks for the heads-up, I've submitted the DITA4Joomla Project for review on JoomlaCode. Once approved I will use this as a the primary repository for managing revisions and code releases for the project. I've also looked at some alternatives to DITA storm, and so far the most impressive has been Xopus, which is a XML Schema independent XML WYSIWIG editor ( tested this with the DITA schema and it does a pretty good job). As much as both Storm and Xopus seem like good candidates for online authoring of DITA, I would still like to see a GPL'd version at some point.

Thanks again
Alex Griessel

Edit:
Project has been added to the JoomlaCode site as http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/dita4joomla/

[jackeapen]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for this great module. I have been searchng for a DIRA solution in the opne source world. can you plz clarify a few points:

1. I already have the DITA-OT. do i still need to download it from http://dita.webnetix.co.za/downloads/DITA-OT.tar.gz?

2. Can I use the DITA Storm editor in my company? is there any licensing issue? if so, any plans to develop a free DITA editor?

3. How can I export the DITA content created in Joomla to multiple formats as we do with DIAT-OT?

[chere9194]

Hi Chris,

I know this is a very old topic, but it's the only topic I could find that was relevant to my question. Pardon me for resurrecting it.

I'm assuming the Template Tutorial project is a done deal. I'm very interested in how you done it.

I'm a professional documenter who wants to implement a modular documentation system from within my project team's Joomla! wiki. I found posts toward the end of this topic suggesting that you might be interested in DITA4Joomla, but came away with the impression that you were still using MediaWiki.

Your to-do list is very long, but I would appreciate it if you could tell me why you selected MediaWiki as a repository for your documentation chunks, how you tagged the chunks inside MediaWiki, and whatever else I might need to know to do what you did. If this sounds like too much to ask (it probably is) I would greatly appreciate any bit of information you have time to share.

As you can guess just by reading my post, I don't have a lot of experience with Joomla!

Thanks, in advance, for your help!