DITA and the challenges of single-source article publishing

DITA is an emerging writing methodology built around XML, and promises major improvements in efficiencies of writing, editing, maintaining, publishing and delivering textual information (Day et al, 2005). Although it is currently predominantly used for IT documentation, DITA can be applied in most fields of publishing, including Web site content management and magazine article publishing, to reduce costs and increase efficiency. DITA is built upon the principle of separation of content and form, which attempts to completely abstract the message of written communication (the content) from the reading format in which it is presented to the reader (the form). This separation paradigm makes redundant many traditional methods of composing, editing, changing, laying out, printing and publishing. The benefits of a change in approach to writing are numerous. One benefit is the ability to single-source, where content source can be maintained in a delivery-agnostic format (DITA), and automatically published to many different types of publications. The approach taken in this paper is to introduce a case study, explain the concept of the separation of content and form, and to then discuss the challenges that a DITA workflow brings to editing in single-sourced publications, to content re-use, and to single-sourcing with different style requirements. This paper concludes that for single-sourcing to be feasible for article and whitepaper publishing: (1) An open source content style manual needs to be developed to provide agreed trans-organisational mechanical editing standards; (2) A greater emphasis must be placed on editing in the developmental stages of an article; (3) The presentational format of an article can be largely automated at an organisational level, leading to improved efficiency and consistency within the publishing workflow.