Scenario-based and model-driven information development with XML DITA
Proceedings of the 21st annual international conference on Documentation
Designing communication: considering the dynamics of the discipline
SIGDOC '06 Proceedings of the 24th annual ACM international conference on Design of communication
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DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new information types and describing new information domains, allowing groups to create very specific, targeted document type definitions using a process called specialization, while at the same time reusing common output transforms and design rules.Specialization provides a way to reconcile the needs for centralized control of major architecture and design with the needs for localized control of group-specific and content-specific guidelines and controls. Specialization allows multiple definitions of content and output to coexist, related through a hierarchy of information types and transforms. This hierarchy lets general transforms know how to deal with new, specific content, and it lets specialized transforms reuse logic from the general transforms. As a result, any content can be processed by any transform, as long as both content and transform are specialization-compliant and part of the same hierarchy. You get the benefit of specific solutions, but you also get the benefit of common standards and shared resources.For some groups, specialization requires a radical move away from centralized processes into a world of negotiated possibilities that introduces many new stakeholders to the information management infrastructure. For other groups, specialization introduces centralization, and, while it provides new opportunities for sharing and reusing logic and design, it also requires new policies and procedures to bring disparate design and development activities into a cohesive, coordinated framework.Previous papers ([1],[2],[3],[4]) have described in some detail how the technology of specialization works, and how it can be implemented using off-the-shelf tools that are dependent only on base levels of W3C standards (XML 1.0, XSLT 1.0). This paper provides a brief summary of recent changes to DITA specialization, and describes their effects on processes, but concentrates primarily on policy considerations involved in the deployment of a specialization architecture.