MadCap DITA Teaser Email

[doc_guy]

In Phase I, you will be able to author content in Flare. However, you will not be authoring native DITA files. You will be authoring using the current MadCap Schema. When you output your content to DITA, you will still need do add some stuff in to the topics in order to make them have all the useful DITA features (like, for example, topic types).

As far as I know, this has not been nailed down yet, and may change, based on feedback that is given during the beta.

I haven't seen a copy of the version of Flare that has this working yet, so I don't know, but my assumption (and this could be wildly wrong) is that your output DITA files won't exactly match your input DITA files (but if that is what you wanted, then just use your input DITA files, right?). There will be some differences to the files, at least in Phase I, because you aren't working with native DITA files.

In Phase II, MadCap will provide the option to select the "mode" of Flare. If you choose the non-DITA mode, you will get the interface that you currently get for authoring. If you choose the DITA mode, you will get a modified interface that will force you to use proper structure. (This will be like the differences between structured and unstructured FrameMaker).

So, to answer your question, Phase I will let you author files that can be exported to DITA. Phase II will let those intermediary files be .dita files, rather than .htm files.

(I'm giving a presentation on MadCap's DITA implementation on Wednesday November 5 at the DITA/TECHCOMM Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina; I'm sitting in the conference right now listening to a presentation on DITA and the DITA model.)

[doc_guy]

I was chatting with Mike Hamilton about DITA, and based on what he said, I think you can expect that DITA in is not going to be exactly the same as DITA out, but the DITA out will contain all the features (conrefs, xrefs, etc.) that you had in your DITA source files. So if you are trying to see if you can use MadCap in your DITA workflow, you should note that the DITA output will be different than what you've been using (so if you are using a Translation Memory system, it may be more like a new project than continuing with a revision of the project).

One example: if you are using conrefs in your original DITA files, Flare is going to import those as snippets. It will export them as conrefs again, but they may be structured differently than the original conref. (Say, in TopicABC.dita you conref a specific paragraph from TopicGHI.dita. That paragraph will be removed from TopicGHI.dita and will be imported as a snippet into both TopicGHI.dita and TopicABC.dita. When you export to DITA, you're going to have TopicABC.dita and TopicGHI.dita, both with conrefs to a new file with a name maybe something like snippet123.dita.)

Does that make sense?

[Rozzano]

On the DITA benefits page, anyone notice the screen shot on the right, third down, shows a Flare V5 (Beta) window... I'm guessing Flare 5 will have DITA standard...?

[doc_guy]

I saw that too, and asked Mike Hamilton about it.

His response was "don't get too caught up in the version number in the screen shots." I hear that what happens is that at MadCap after a major release (like v4), the coders flip a switch on the product version and amp it up to the next major version. So, while the screen shot does say Flare V5, the functionality you see will come in the next version of Flare, be that a dot release of v4 or v5.

You should probably see phase I implementation in early-to-mid 2009, which will be too early for a full V5 release, so watch for this functionality in a dot release.

That is my guess, but it is a pretty good guess. But MadCap obviously isn't going to be bound by anything I, a mere customer, say off the cuff in the forums!!

[Paul Griffiths]

Thanks Paul [Pehrson]. That's useful information!