Just doing a little data mining of the posts I’ve written about DITA in the last few years. I think that there’s a gap for DITA users who are writers or content creators and not coders. I’d like to say that DITA bloggers can bridge that gap. Join me on the DITA blog by writing your own experiences with DITA.

These posts are ordered from newest to oldest, and I wrote them to share my experiences with DITA and to chronicle some of the Central Texas DITA User Group meetings I attended.

A watched folder for publishing from DITA source files

June 15, 2007: I’ve figured out a way to automate DITA builds where you just drop a zip file of your DITA source files into a “watched folder” and PDF and CHM files are automatically built.

Usability and inline links in user assistance systems

May 19, 2007: Examining DITA’s linking and usability.

Getting Started with DITA

April 12, 2007: A brief overview for a couple of fellow Austin writers who have asked me recently how and where to get started with DITA.

Checking out the new DITA Users website

April 10, 2007: Using a coupon code (it’s BETA) I joined the new DITA Users website for free today.

A new DITA Open ToolKit release and brand new DITA newbie blog

October 04, 2006 : A couple of blog-worthy items in the DITA world

Turning information into DITA topics

September 14, 2006: What would you do to make this particular type of content into topics?

How to substitute your custom CSS when using DITA Open Toolkit transforms

September 07, 2006 : When you want to use the DITA Open Toolkit transforms but you want to use your own CSS, here’s how to substitute your CSS for HTML Help (CHM)

DITA Open ToolKit now has a User Guide

August 22, 2006: Just released last week, the DITA Open ToolKit now has its own User Guide

Using the DITA catalog for your specializations, creating a Public ID

August 16, 2006 : Thought our discovery might help you as you specialize DITA

Evaluating XML editors for DITA

August 01, 2006: Notes from the July 2006 Central Texas DITA User Group meeting

A web-form-based DITA editor

July 14, 2006: Could this be the perfect storm for a DITA wiki?

Troubleshooting tip for the DITA Open Toolkit install

June 23, 2006 : Finally figured out the fix for my DITA Open Toolkit “resource/messages.xml” not found error

Where to put your files and other setup for DITA

June 09, 2006: Working with the environment setup for DITA

Defining OPML and relating to DITA maps

May 31, 2006: I found a nice definition for OPML from whatis.com as their word of the day, and I’m starting to wonder about similarities between OPML and DITA maps

Learning more about DITA

May 18, 2006: Learning about how to get started with DITA and a trivia item for fun

Notes from the central Texas DITA user group meeting

April 21, 2006: Two speakers shared their takeaways from DITA 2006 and CMS 2006

Our DITA experience at BMC Software

March 02, 2006: Link to a case study published about BMC’s DITA experience

DITA from the trenches

February 20, 2006: Information Architect from IBM, Kristin Thomas, presented to the Central Texas DITA User’s Group meeting last week, and here are my notes.

Moving from Books to Topic-oriented Writing

January 27, 2006 : A report from JoAnn Hackos’ talk at the Central Texas DITA Users Group meeting January 2006

DITA and wiki combo

December 05, 2005: Darwin Information Typing Architecture, meet Wiki.

Darwin Information Typing Architecture – DITA (dih tuh)

November 04, 2005: Roundup of the DITA reading I’ve been diving back in to lately.

Thanks to David Brainard for figuring out the basic problem! At BMC, we all have a Documentum client installed on our desktops, so with the 4i client, my Classpath contained C:\Program Files\Documentum\Shared\dfc.jar. Apparently there is a collision of some sort between Documentum’s dfc.jar and DITA’s lib\dost.jar in the classpath which prevented the DITA Open Toolkit from running, manifesting itself as errors finding resource\messages.xml.

In my case, the fix was to remove the reference to C:\Program Files\Documentum\Shared\dfc.jar from my Classpath environment variable. Since this discovery, I’ve upgraded to Documentum 5 client, and there is no longer a collision. The Documentum 5 client inserted “C:\Program Files\Documentum\dctm.jar” in my classpath, but the DITA Open Toolkit doesn’t seem to mind that.

Apparently other applications can be “classpath hogs” so to speak, so if you get a “can’t find resource\messages.xml” error message, remove other items from your Classpath variable one-by-one until you find the culprit. In my case, we created a simple “run.bat” file that contained only:

set CLASSPATH=C:\saxon\saxon.jar;C:\ant\apache-ant-1.6.5;\lib\dost.jar;.

ant demo.faq

Couple of notes about this batch file – the dot at the end is for your current directory. We chose to do ant demo.faq rather than ant all because it won’t take as long if the build is successful. An “ant all” build can take anywhere from 2-13 minutes.

By setting the classpath just for this session and running this batch file within the DITA-OT-1.2.2 directory, we could pinpoint that it was my Classpath that was the issue, and then remove entries one by one. It’s a handy troubleshooting tip. Thanks again Dave!

Jen Linton, the co-author of Introduction to DITA:Getting Started with the Darwin Information Typing Architecture is in Austin to teach the DITA Getting Started workshop hosted by BMC Software. I’m attending along with several of my co-workers, and we’re all learning a lot.

Last night I went to dinner with Don Day, chair of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee, Jen, and Wendy Shepperd, a manager here at BMC. Jen asked Don, “What’s the story with the bird in the DITA logo?” I had blogged earlier that it’s a finch with a specialized beak, but it turns out there’s more to the story. Don explained that it’s a woodpecker finch, one of the finches Darwin documented from the Galapagos Islands, and it’s a tool-using animal. Woodpecker finches pluck the spines from cacti or use wooden splinters to extract grubs and other bugs from holes that their beaks don’t fit for a tasty meal. That’s a fun piece of trivia. Here’s the logo to which I’m referring.

After dinner we went to the Central Texas DITA User Group meeting, where Jen told and showed us how she assembled the Introduction to DITA book using DITA topics. The most interesting part for me was to learn about the Mekon FrameMaker plug-in that lets you import DITA content into FrameMaker for book assembly and above all, index generation. Nifty! It’s part of the DITA Open Toolkit if you browse the CVS repository.

In our training class, we wondered out loud where all the local User Groups are forming currently, and I found this list at http://dita.xml.org/user-groups:

Canada

• Ontario: Toronto DITA User Group
• British Columbia: Vancouver DITA User Group

United States

• California: Silicon Valley DITA Interest Group
• Indiana: Indy DITA
• Massachusetts: Boston DITA User Group
• New York: NY Metro DITA Users Group
• North Carolina: Research Triangle Park DUG
• Texas: Central Texas DITA Users Group (Austin)