Book Reviews
We encourage members to review books on professional subjects.
DITA Basics: DITA 101 by Ann Rockley, Steve Manning and Charles Cooper
Reviewed by Walter Hanig
Are you wondering what the buzz about DITA is all about? Or, wondering just what DITA is and whether you should care? If so, DITA 101: Fundamentals of DITA for Authors and Managers was written for you.
The book begins with some background on the origins of DITA and then proceeds to cover the rationale for structured content, reuse best practices, DITA building blocks, an overview of the implementation process from outline to content development, planning for DITA, metadata use, and tools considerations.
The authors, who are well-known in the content management community, assume that the reader knows nothing about DITA, XML, content management, or structured content. The writing style is familiar and informal; the examples used to illustrate many concepts are based on recipes.
The book reflects the overlapping nature of its audience, authors and managers. Some topics, such as those relating benefits of DITA, will be of interest to both groups. The sections on DITA topic types, metadata, and attributes, for example, will appeal more to authors. “Planning for DITA” is more relevant for managers and DITA evangelists.
The book is definitely not a guide to implementing content using DITA; Introduction to DITA: A Guide to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture by Jennifer Linton and Kylene Bruski is a more appropriate book if that’s what you need.
The pre-publication draft I reviewed contained a surprising number of style and grammar issues that may be addressed by final publication. These may be distracting to technical writers, but they don’t diminish the value of the content.
DITA 101 achieves its goal of providing a glimpse into why managers and authors should know something about DITA. It’s a useful starting point, and some sections (rationale for structure, planning for DITA, considerations for specializing) are more comprehensive and useful. Using recipes as examples is effective in demonstrating concepts.
The book’s value as a starting point could have been enhanced by providing references to more additional resources for readers wanting or needing to learn more about various justification, planning, or implementation considerations.
Price is $9.95 (US) for PDF download, $24.95 (US) for trade paperback available from www.lulu.com. Contact The Rockley Group, www.rockley.com for non-US pricing.
Walter Hanig is a documentation project manager at Teradata, a vendor of enterprise-scale relational database software and parallel processing hardware. He’s a past president and treasurer, and still-active member, of the San Diego STC chapter.