Marking Down DITA

This talk introduces Jarno Elovirta’s DITA-OT Markdown plugins, which extend the DITA Open Toolkit so you can use Markdown files directly in topic references and export existing DITA content in Markdown format for use in other publishing systems.

Transcript

1. Marking Down DITA ! DITA-OT Markdown plugins infotexture Information Architecture & Content Strategy Roger W. Fienhold Sheen
2. DITA-OT Day Munich — November 15, 2015 " Agenda Markdown – Web Writing Simplified Mobile Authoring & Lightweight Content Markdown Meets DITA The DITA-OT Markdown Plugin The “Markdown DITA” Format Benefits & Use Cases
3. DITA-OT Day Munich — November 15, 2015 # Markdown – Web Writing Simplified Created in 2004 by John Gruber & Aaron Swartz, Markdown is: 1. a plain text formatting syntax; and 2. software … that converts the plain text formatting to HTML The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. So while Markdown was originally designed to make it easier to write for the web without worrying about angle brackets and tags, it’s proving useful for more than just websites…
4. DITA-OT Day Munich — November 15, 2015 $ Mobile Authoring & Lightweight Content The rise of mobile devices sparked renewed interest in lightweight content formats and ease of use as authors began looking for ways to take their writing (and their tools) with them on the go. Authors can capture notes with a smartphone on the go, flush out the draft back at their desk, and proofread the final result on a tablet later without copying-and-pasting or converting to other file formats along the way. Since writing in Markdown encourages authors to focus on structure rather than presentation, it’s a good match for structured authoring scenarios in which minimal markup is sufficient.
5. DITA-OT Day Munich — November 15, 2015 % Markdown Meets DITA The learning curve associated with XML dialects like DITA presents a barrier to broader adoption of structured authoring. But why ask subject matter experts to struggle with XML or learn a new tool before they can provide input to our publications? Shouldn’t we just let people write and let the tools figure out what to do? Several new solutions embrace this notion, many of which rely on Markdown: Lightweight DITA DITA Glass oXygen’s URL-based on-the-fly conversion from various file formats to DITA Some use h2d to convert to HTML as an interim format, and onward to DITA. This limits vocabulary to the original Markdown syntax — but one goes further…
6. DITA-OT Day Munich — November 15, 2015 & The DITA-OT Markdown Plugin Jarno Elovirta’s DITA-OT Markdown plugin extends the toolkit so you can use Markdown files directly in topic references. Install it with the dita command: dita -install https://github.com/jelovirt/dita-ot-markdown/releases/ ↩ download/1.1.0/com.elovirta.dita.markdown_1.1.0.zip To add a Markdown topic, set the @format attribute to markdown so the plugin will recognize the source file as Markdown and convert it to DITA: <map> <topicref href="markdown-dita-topic.md" format="markdown"/> </map> The DITA-OT Markdown plugin not only enables the DITA-OT to read Markdown, it also provides a new markdown transformation type that can be used to publish existing DITA content in Markdown format.
7. DITA-OT Day Munich — November 15, 2015 ' The “Markdown DITA” Format The DITA-OT Markdown plugin introduces a new Markdown flavor called “Markdown DITA”, a representation of DITA content in Markdown. The shortcut reference link syntax is used to represent DITA key references, so you can just write [key] to create a cross-reference like <xref keyref="key"/> . Definition lists use the PHP Markdown Extra format, so Term : Definition. becomes a DITA definition list: <dl> <delentry> <dt>Term</dt> <dd>Definition.</dd> </delentry> </dl>
8. DITA-OT Day Munich — November 15, 2015 ( Syntax Extensions Tables use the MultiMarkdown table extension format, and Pandoc’s header attributes can be used to define id or outputclass attributes, so # Topic title { #carrot .juice} becomes: <topic id="carrot" outputclass="juice"> <title>Topic title</title> Where necessary, Markdown DITA establishes a few conventions of its own to support additional DITA features: Specify the information type of the generated DITA topic with a header attribute like {.task} Generate <section> and <example> elements with the {.section} and {.example} attributes. The plugin’s syntax reference provides an overview of the supported constructs and illustrates how DITA’s XML structures are represented in Markdown DITA.
9. DITA-OT Day Munich — November 15, 2015 ) Benefits & Use Cases Markdown becomes a first-class citizen Makes it easier to contribute to DITA publications Facilitates review processes with less technical audiences Feed DITA content into Markdown-based publishing systems Workflow Considerations 1. Avoid roundtripping. 2. Once complex content is converted to DITA, it stays in DITA. If the input is a one-off contribution, use the Markdown file as raw material that is easily converted to DITA and enriched with conditional processing attributes, conkeyrefs or other more complex semantics. 3. Simpler content stays Markdown. Simple content authored collaboratively over multiple versions is kept in Markdown, extended with Markdown DITA conventions and combined as necessary with more complex content maintained in DITA XML.
10. DITA-OT Day Munich — November 15, 2015 Resources http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ https://github.com/jelovirt/dita-ot-markdown/ http://infotexture.net/2015/04/dita-ot-markdown-plugin/