DITA for the Web: Make Adaptive Content Simple for Writers and Developers

Exploiting Layout and Content

Don Day, Contelligence Group

Why do I want to share this topic? I enjoy improving how writers create and use content.

I will be sharing my experience in approaching a recent

and acute pain point for many:

How to reliably create adaptive content for the Web.

Introductions

About Don Day Hobbies Publishing Technologies

Collecting and using old film

cameras

Listening to assorted,

eclectic, independent music

artists

Loving on my cats and

family, in that order

Model rocketry

Created IBM's first SGML application for

AIX online help

Helped design IBMIDDoc DTD

IBM's W3C Primary Rep to XSL and CSS

Working Groups

Led workgroup that designed the DITA

framework, and initiated OASIS, DITA-OT

activities

Created IBM's DITA Wiki prototype

Extending "DITA for the Web" to crossover

use in Web publishing

Or as he sees himself...

Footnote 1

What we'll cover: Premise: Adaptive Content is not easy!

Problem: Holes in the Web Architecture

Options: Editor Wars

Application: Patching the Hole

Premise

Goal: Adaptive Content... Content that is structurally and semantically

enriched;"intelligent content".

Necessary for adaptive delivery: device traits, responsive

reflow, content repurposing (imagine text-to-video),

personalization.

"Unstructured content is stupid and old-fashioned. It's

costly, complex, and does not generate a competitive

advantage." Ann Mulcahy,

Former CEO of Xerox

Sliced and Diced... Key driver: mobility of content (follow the device; follow

the person)

Key requirement: adaptable content (it needs handles)

Key format: HTML5 (which is changing all the rules)

Key need: consistent authoring (business rules, term

usage, profiling values, etc.)

Key gap: a standard Web authoring architecture to

support those needs.

Defining the Problem

Is this what the change is about?

Footnote 1

Or the issue more like this?

Footnote 1

How HTML5 Changes the Game All new applications for the Web will be done with

HTML5

Enables interactivity and behaviors as only Flash could

beforehand

Unifies user experience across browsers, even challenging

Web apps (just wait)

Currently irrelevant: HTML and XHTML

Currently marginalized: anything XML (goes for

DocBook, DITA, even SPFE)

Survey of Options

Levels of Markup

Degree of Markup Example Knowledge Required of User

Intrinsic "thingness" typed data Subject domain knowledge

Necessary Descriptive

Syntax

<img src="url"...> Craft knowledge

Necessary Presentational

Structure

HTML5

fig/img/figcaption

Guidelines

Necessary Representational

Structurre

XML semantic models Assimilation into the collective

Contextual Structure Web page templates, XSL

page masters

No subject domain knowledge; all

UA/UX/UI/You-name-it

Levels of Markup, Charted

3 is most craft-dependent for markup dependency, but

also most tolerant for lack of craft knowledge.

4 is most validation-dependent, but XML editors manage

the craft knowledge; paradoxically easier in principle if

you grok the object orientedness

Fielded content in a database is an implicit root form of

all of this, of course.

The DITA Option DITA's best feature for the Web is

its architecture

Need structure for adaptive content?

o Look to the experience and

practice behind DITA!

Dress form

model

"Power loader" model

Application

Categories of in-browser editors Compose everything in a contentEditable div:

WordPress

Use a DB schema to define a form: flat and inflexible

content models

Use an XML schema to define a structured editor:

narrative content with structure

Use a document to define its own form

Use XML-based templates to set up more dynamic

forms

XML-based templates to set up more dynamic forms

Template is validated by a schema, so when it is read into the form

generator, the resulting form represents the features in the template as

allowed patterns.

Repeated elements = "one or more"

Single element = "one required" (or optional - which will it be? can we

switch?)

Sequence is implicit in a set of elements unless one repeats, which

indicates mixable sequence.

Inner content should align with contentEditable.

[text] conventions can represent placeholders and contextual help

Use XML comments to represent semantics in their parent elements?

Not all tools can parse comments though.

Examples

Conventional fielded form

Examples Semantic metadata augmenting Google Structured Data Markup Helper

Examples Semantic structure insertion Controlling Presentation in Structured

Content

Examples Self-building form

Examples Template-informed form

Browser Editor Primal Scream Mike Davidson: The Sorry State of WYSIWYG Editors

(April 27, 2009)

Rachel Andrew: Your WYSIWYG Editor Sucks

Karen McGrane: WYSIWTF

Karen McGrane: Drupalcon Keynote Video, Slides and Talk

Notes

Rick Yagodich: What You See is WYSISMUC

WYSIWTFFTWOMG!

Deane Barker: Why WYSIWYG is Still a Problem

Quips Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

If you have already abandoned hope, please disregard

this notice.

Questions ?

Contact Info Don R. Day

Co-Founder, ContelligenceGroup.com

Co-Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee

LinkedIn: donrday Twitter: @donrday

About.me: donrday Skype: don.r.day "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

--T.S. Eliot