DITA treasures

Are you braving the wilds of the web looking for information on DITA? Are you hunting through dusty stacks of your library? (Yes, libraries do still exist!) Or have you mounted an expedition to a bookstore? (Perhaps more rare than a library, but they too are still around.) Well, I'm here to help. This post covers some of the best caches of valuable DITA  assets.

DITA Writer

DITA Writer is a great one-stop spot for blog posts and lists of DITA conferences, tools, and vendors. This site was created and is maintained by Keith Schengili-Roberts.

DITA Best Practices: A Roadmap for Writing, Editing, and Architecting in DITA

This book by Laura Bellamy, Michelle Carey, Jenifer Schlotfeldt is one of my favorites. You will find out what you need to know before using DITA, how to use DITA, and how to implement DITA. No link for this one, but you can buy it from most online book sellers.

DITA Demonstration Collection

The DITA Demonstration Collection provides a set of sample DITA files that are meant to be used to demonstrate selected capabilities and benefits of DITA. The files are up-to-date in that they reflect the latest DITA release (1.3). An excellent resource!

DITA Community Resources

The DITA Community Github organization serves the DITA community by providing a place for things like Open Toolkit plugins, sample content, or other utilities that don't have a better home.

DITA Open Toolkit

Do you want to develop and publish DITA content without buying DITA tools? Use the DITA Open Toolkit.

OASIS

In my previous post, I talked about where DITA calls home. You can find the latest spec as well as the previous iterations at the OASIS website. Among the finds at the DITA TC home page are White Papers information on the technical committee and subcommittees that maintain the DITA standard. On this sign-up page, you can subscribe to a public mail list for providing input to the OASIS DITA Technical Committee members.

IBM developerWorks

OASIS may be the adopted home of DITA, but it was born at IBM. Take a look at Introduction to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture for a good introduction to the DITA standard. Remember though, it was published in 2001 at the dawn of DITA. Still, it is an excellent initiation to DITA.

DITA XML.org

DITA XML.org is a community-driven site and encourages content contributions from readers.  You can find news, services, products, information, and much more. Note: The site is undergoing a refit but still is very usable and useful. 

JANA

My Home, Sweet, Home! No matter where your company is at in the DITA implementation process - from evaluation, to ramping up your DITA implementation efforts, to making the push to close out your DITA conversion program - JANA’s experts can assist your implementation efforts at any level and at any scale. We are producing DITA-related webinars and workshops. Send me a note and I will be happy to put you on our mailing list. If you have a topic you're interested in, let me know and we will develop a presentation or webinar specifically for you!

Are there any sites or books that you have found useful? Let me know in the comments below.