DITA round up

Just doing a little data mining of the posts I’ve written about DITA in the last few years. I think that there’s a gap for DITA users who are writers or content creators and not coders. I’d like to say that DITA bloggers can bridge that gap. Join me on the DITA blog by writing your own experiences with DITA.

These posts are ordered from newest to oldest, and I wrote them to share my experiences with DITA and to chronicle some of the Central Texas DITA User Group meetings I attended.

A watched folder for publishing from DITA source files

June 15, 2007: I’ve figured out a way to automate DITA builds where you just drop a zip file of your DITA source files into a “watched folder” and PDF and CHM files are automatically built.

Usability and inline links in user assistance systems

May 19, 2007: Examining DITA’s linking and usability.

Getting Started with DITA

April 12, 2007: A brief overview for a couple of fellow Austin writers who have asked me recently how and where to get started with DITA.

Checking out the new DITA Users website

April 10, 2007: Using a coupon code (it’s BETA) I joined the new DITA Users website for free today.

A new DITA Open ToolKit release and brand new DITA newbie blog

October 04, 2006 : A couple of blog-worthy items in the DITA world

Turning information into DITA topics

September 14, 2006: What would you do to make this particular type of content into topics?

How to substitute your custom CSS when using DITA Open Toolkit transforms

September 07, 2006 : When you want to use the DITA Open Toolkit transforms but you want to use your own CSS, here’s how to substitute your CSS for HTML Help (CHM)

DITA Open ToolKit now has a User Guide

August 22, 2006: Just released last week, the DITA Open ToolKit now has its own User Guide

Using the DITA catalog for your specializations, creating a Public ID

August 16, 2006 : Thought our discovery might help you as you specialize DITA

Evaluating XML editors for DITA

August 01, 2006: Notes from the July 2006 Central Texas DITA User Group meeting

A web-form-based DITA editor

July 14, 2006: Could this be the perfect storm for a DITA wiki?

Troubleshooting tip for the DITA Open Toolkit install

June 23, 2006 : Finally figured out the fix for my DITA Open Toolkit “resource/messages.xml” not found error

Where to put your files and other setup for DITA

June 09, 2006: Working with the environment setup for DITA

Defining OPML and relating to DITA maps

May 31, 2006: I found a nice definition for OPML from whatis.com as their word of the day, and I’m starting to wonder about similarities between OPML and DITA maps

Learning more about DITA

May 18, 2006: Learning about how to get started with DITA and a trivia item for fun

Notes from the central Texas DITA user group meeting

April 21, 2006: Two speakers shared their takeaways from DITA 2006 and CMS 2006

Our DITA experience at BMC Software

March 02, 2006: Link to a case study published about BMC’s DITA experience

DITA from the trenches

February 20, 2006: Information Architect from IBM, Kristin Thomas, presented to the Central Texas DITA User’s Group meeting last week, and here are my notes.

Moving from Books to Topic-oriented Writing

January 27, 2006 : A report from JoAnn Hackos’ talk at the Central Texas DITA Users Group meeting January 2006

DITA and wiki combo

December 05, 2005: Darwin Information Typing Architecture, meet Wiki.

Darwin Information Typing Architecture - DITA (dih tuh)

November 04, 2005: Roundup of the DITA reading I’ve been diving back in to lately.

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How to create help files for custom BMC Performance Managers

All this is documented in the Controlled Availability release of the BMC Performance Manager Software Development Kit (SDK), but I thought I’d write it up here as well, hoping it’s helpful. Contact your sales rep if you want more information about the SDK for BMC Performance Manager.

BMC Performance Manager is a product with the ability to be extended, allowing you to write your own custom monitoring tools, called Performance Managers. If you write a custom Performance Manager, you’re going to want a help system to go with it, so that your users know which parameters are monitored with your tool. And if you want your custom Performance Manager to be certified by BMC Software, a help system is required. Here’s an overview of writing that custom help system including sample files.

1. Write an HTML file for each application class and the parameters within that class, nested like this set of sample HTML files for the BMC Performance Manager for Citrix Presentation Server . For example, the farm application class contains parameters like “logged in users” and “disconnected sessions,” with each parameter documented in separate HTML files. These files contain Dreamweaver template code but should be useable with any HTML editor.
2. Place your Help content files in your Performance Manager Maven project in the following location: …/META-INF/help/browser_help/.
3. Open your application definition XML file and add these Help elements in the application definition: help-group-definition or help-group-reference, and help-item. You need unique attributes msgkey and name on both these elements. Here is an example code snippet:

4.  <application-definition name="patsdk-ri-service">
   
   <display-name>Reference Implementation Application</display-name>
   
   <description> Instances of this application-definition can be used
   
   to monitor the availability of many common network services
   
   such as HTTP, Telnet, FTP, etc.</description>
   
   <help-group-definition msgkey="riapp.intro.displayName" name="intro">
   
   <display-name>Patsdk RI Application</display-name>
   
   <help-item msgkey="riapp.intro.about.displayName" name="about">
   
   <display-name>About</display-name>
   
   <file>riapp/about.htm</file>
   
   </help-item>
   
   </help-group-definition> <help-group-definition
   
   msgkey="DRCIT-Farm-Container.desc.book"
   
   name="DRCIT-Farm-Containerbook">
   </help-group-definition>

5. Add Help-related fields to your project.properties file (located in your Maven project folder). There are a couple of commented lines that you can uncomment by deleting the # sign at the beginning of the line. Set solution.product.code equal to your PAR file name (without the .par extension), and use a sample category such as database, networking, etc.

6. solution.product.code=PRD
   
   solution.help.category=networking

7. When you build and deploy your Performance Manager, the .htm files that you created are compiled into cross-platform browser-based help. These files and the Help content are packaged in a .jar file which is then put into the .par file and deployed to the BMC Portal Help repository server. Automagically.

Sounds pretty straightforward, and we’ve done this internally for a few Performance Managers already, which is why I wanted to share some sample files with you. Let us know how it works for you.

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