Our next DITA meeting will be Wednesday, March 16th from 6:30-8:00. As usual we’ll provide some beer and dinner (please try and RSVP if you’re coming).
Instead of a presentation, our March DITA meetup will feature a discussion on the subject of “Defending DITA”. DITA gets a lot of shade from various quarters: some writers think it’s too techy. Developers think it’s too complicated when there are tools like Markdown. And at last year’s Tekom conference, some German CCMS vendors claimed it was entirely unnecessary if you already have a CCMS.
Here are a few articles I’ve been reading to get you started, but if you’d rather, bring your own examples of how you’ve heard DITA attacked and how you responded. Are some of these critiques legitimate? What isn’t DITA good for, and how will you answer if you’re asked to explain why it is right for your use cases (IF it is)?
Two articles blogger Tom Johnson wrote comparing DITA to Jekyll and other developer tools:
- The Problem with Adopting Bleeding-Edge Tools
- What is the ideal tool for developer documentation environments?
An article Scriptorium DITA consultancy founder Sarah O’Keefe wrote about the Tekom dustup:
Eliot Kimber’s response to the same incident:
Let’s use these discussions as a springboard for a satisfying mix of industry gossip and discussion where the value is in DITA today. Hope to see you there!