Don’t ask me why, but it’s been a while since I’ve ended up delivering a really advanced XMetaL course, much less for DITA.  I guess because DITA is still in fact quite “cutting edge”. In prep for giving an online XMetaL Developer course, I got inspired to share some ‘Little Known Tips and Tricks’ for XMetaL... have a look.

Training was interesting for me because for those who’ve been working with DITA for so many years now, inside what feels like the most active and thriving community this industry has ever seen, you can completely lose sight of the fact that specifically because DITA is so flexible and supported by so many tools, we’re getting more users than ever, and every day new people are showing up to the party.  

When I did my ‘Intro to DITA’ webinar last month, we got triple the registrations we were expecting!  Obviously, there are lots of new people out there still who still need the initial light shedding on the Ol’ Darwin Information Typing Architecture…!

Also not par for the course, it was XMetaL Developer training.  It was for a client that we worked with last year.  They’re an independent and out-of-the-box group who always challenges me with interesting ideas and questions about the technologies they’re using, with so it's great to be teaching them to take their solution to the next level.

Anyway - the rest of this is a bit ‘techie’ so, if that’s not your scene, be warned.

“In-Parent” Configurations

Anyone who knows XMetaL Configurations can tell you it’s great in terms of all the different ways you can represent or control interaction with an element (inline database forms, custom COM controls, toggling elements, mini-templates and so forth), but did you know that you can make these context-specific?

In the CTM file editor in Developer, right-click on any element and select “In-Parent element” and then the name of your element (I find this UI a bit messed up, but that’s how it works).  You will get asked what element context you’d like and when you choose, you get a new line with your element on the left, and in the second ‘Parent’ column, you get the element you chose.  Now any changes to that new line will only affect the first element when it is a child of the second!  Imagine if for example <phonenumber> tags generally could be free text, but in the context of table cells, they would be controlled by a database-linked forms... dates, emails,  links or anything else you wanted to control could be controlled similarly.

Drag and Drop and Copy/Paste Debugging

Did you know – you can debug any piece of code in XMetaL simply by copying it to the clipboard and pasting it into a document?  Even things that check the user's active selection or interact with external applications still work.  All you need to do is have the proper string at the beginning of what’s on the clipboard (dragging and dropping onto the doc works too).  I found it an extremely fast and useful way to play with code without needing to build a whole project or close/open XMetaL.

Like so:

For JScript it's:

     // XMetaL Script Language JScript:

For VBScript:

      ' XMetaL Script Language VBScript:

e.g.:

      //XMetaL Script Language JScript:

     Application.Alert("Hello World!" );

OR more usefully, check variables or properties:

     // XMetaL Script Language Jscript:

     Application.Alert(Application.Path);

     Application.Alert(Selection.Text);

DITA Language Reference Inside Author (5.1 and up)

Did you notice that if you if you are using XMetaL Author (not sure if this is just in Enterprise Edition?), when you right-click on any DITA element you have a link to the OASIS DITA Language specification for that element.  Don’t know what a <ph> tag is? Just enter one, right click, and look it up!

This kind of customised contextual help can also be applied for any DTD.  I personally like to see this hosted in the Resource Manager to allow you to see help and your document in one seamless view, the way that Microsoft have learned towards a dock-able help ‘bar’ that runs down one side of the application.

If you found this interesting or have any questions, please do contact me or leave me a comment.  I'm always looking for something to blog about!

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Hello all,

Just last week I recorded my first "on-demand" webinar session. I did an "Introduction to DITA" that I hope is simple enough for anyone to follow.  I've been on loads, but this is the first time I've done a fully solo session that actually makes a reusable learning asset intended for free online streaming.

X-Pubs is doing a 3-part Webinar series on DITA at the moment starting with my introductory session, then one by Michael Boses of Quark and the DITA BusDocs subcomittee, and then Mark Poston is doing a case study where we've actually implemented a completely non-Tech Docs DITA solution. (more on the others is on the front page of X-Pubs.com)

In my session, I have a live demo in the middle (always risky!) with some real DITA content.   Unfortunately the recording ends a bit abruptly due to a technical issue and there was a glitch briefly in the middle but neither affect the quality of the content.  As always, you feedback and questions are invited.

You can view the recording here:

http://www.x-pubs.com/site/news/1613/

 

 

Hi everybody!

After my keynote at Doctrain West 2008, I was invited by MyTechnologyLawyer.com and the very well received idratherbewriting.com/ to do some interview spots.

Download the MP3s here:

MyTechnologyLawyer.com
http://www.idratherbewriting.com/

 The MyTechnologyLawyer.com spot was with:

• Emma Hamer
• Scott Abel
• and Rahel Bailie

 

all also well respected minds in the Content Solutions space!

On Thursday last week Quark held a short but very interesting product launch seminar to give a few important clients and press a glimpse of Quark’s Dynamic Publishing Solution. Mekon were also very privileged to be invited.

For those of us who have been involved with technical publications for several years, the concept of dynamic publishing is not new. Mekon for one has developed dynamic publishing solutions for many years using SGML, XML, or a SQL database combined with tools such as E3, XyEnterprise XPP, Antenna House XSL Formatter and Quadralay Web Works to name but a few. Such solutions lend themselves very well to technical publication workflows, where content can be re-used for multiple products and document types, feeding through to several output or delivery formats.

In the past two years we have carried out many Content Strategy Audits at high tech and manufacturing companies. In all these companies the results of the audit showed the potential for re-use in marketing publications, and it is already well understood that marketing departments need to produce many different output formats. This is where the problem starts. Marketing have different design driven challenges than technical communications and hence use products like Adobe InDesign and QuarkXpress to produce the ever changing marketing communications information. They are not about to swap these traditional design tools for content driven tools such as Adobe FrameMaker, JustSystems XMetaL or PTC Arbortext Editor.

So all this lead up is to prepare you for what I believe is a fantastic step forward for marketing departments and their need to integrate with the wider tech comms content-driven workflows. Simply put, what has been missing is an XML content interface to allow marketing department to continue using their favoured layout tools and reap the benefit of this current XML revolution.

Quark Dynamic Publishing solution has the potential to be this missing link.

Ray Schiavone, Quark CEO, delivered the brief which indicates the importance they place on this product. Interestingly the demonstration showed In.Vision Express Author producing valid XML content, managed in an open source CMS, automatically publishing the content through predefined QuarkXpress templates to produce PDF and HTML output. Their plan is to add other output types, in particular mobile devices. I also heard that they are working on DITA support which is clearly where the market is going these days

Watch this space.