DITA Bootstrap⁴ plug-in

March 7, 2019

The latest version of my Bootstrap plug-in for DITA Open Toolkit 3.3 generates HTML5 output with a Bootstrap 4 styling base.

Lightweight DITA Committee Note № 2

December 6, 2018

The OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC announced a new version of their Committee Note “Lightweight DITA: An Introduction”.

Customizing DITA output

November 5, 2018

At DITA Europe in Rotterdam, I spoke about producing custom output with DITA Open Toolkit and suggested it may no longer be quite as hard as you recall.

2023

2019

DITA Bootstrap⁴ plug-in

March 7, 2019

The latest version of my Bootstrap plug-in for DITA Open Toolkit 3.3 generates HTML5 output with a Bootstrap 4 styling base.

2018

Lightweight DITA Committee Note № 2

December 6, 2018

The OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC announced a new version of their Committee Note “Lightweight DITA: An Introduction”.

Customizing DITA output

November 5, 2018

At DITA Europe in Rotterdam, I spoke about producing custom output with DITA Open Toolkit and suggested it may no longer be quite as hard as you recall.

DITA-OT Plug-in Registry

November 4, 2018

DITA-OT 3.2 introduces a new plug-in registry that makes it easier to discover and install new plug-ins via a searchable list at dita-ot.org/plugins.

2017

DITA-OT³ Markdown Support

November 30, 2017

As of version 3.0, DITA Open Toolkit supports Markdown out-of-the-box along with the alternative authoring formats proposed for Lightweight DITA.

DITA Users September Meetup

September 8, 2017

Join the DITA Users Berlin meetup on September 27 to learn how HERE Technologies tests and validates DITA docs with open-source plugins for DITA Open Toolkit.

Teaching Information Architecture

May 20, 2017

This spring I’m teaching Information Architecture in the Master’s degree program in Content Strategy at FH Joanneum University of Applied Sciences in Graz.

2016

DITA Open Toolkit Docs Process

November 14, 2016

At DITA Europe this year, I’ll be speaking about how the DITA Open Toolkit project uses DITA features and open-source tools to build the toolkit documentation.

API docs in DITA and Markdown

March 5, 2016

I spoke in London at the Write The Docs mini-conference on Documenting APIs hosted by the UK’s Government Digital Service, the team behind the GOV.UK website.

DITA Users Berlin meetup

February 22, 2016

Join our first meetup to learn how Markdown can help you to simplify the authoring process and gather input from contributors who are less familiar with DITA.

2015

Roundtripping DITA–XLIFF Conversions

June 3, 2015

At the XLIFF Symposium in Berlin, I showed how to transform XML files from the Darwin Information Typing Architecture to a single XLIFF file and back.

Marking Down DITA

April 30, 2015

On the rise of Markdown as an alternative input method for DITA projects.

2014

Wire. Great conversations.

December 4, 2014

For the past year, I’ve been working with many of the original team behind Skype to launch a new messenger called Wire.

Contributing to the Toolkit via GitHub

November 20, 2014

Now that the DITA Open Toolkit is hosted on GitHub, it’s easier than ever to contribute changes to the DITA-OT source code or the documentation.

DITA-OT Documentation Repository

November 19, 2014

At DITA Europe in Munich, the DITA Open Toolkit contributors split the toolkit documentation into a dedicated repository to make it easier to contribute.

Using Icon Fonts in DITA Projects

November 19, 2014

This year at DITA Europe in Munich, I showed how to use scalable vector icons in DITA projects to ensure that output renders sharply at any resolution. ✨

Automating DITA Builds (Seattle Edition)

April 28, 2014

After presenting at DITA Europe in Munich last year, I was invited to give the talk at this year’s Content Management Strategies/DITA North America in Seattle.

2013

Automating DITA Builds

November 15, 2013

At DITA Europe 2013 in Munich, I’ll be speaking on “Automating DITA Builds — Lightweight Continuous Integration for Documentation Projects”.

2011

Talk @ tekom: Social Versioning

January 20, 2011

At this year’s tekom spring conference, I’ll be speaking on the use of distributed version control systems for collaborative authoring of documentation.

2010

Accessible Documentation

June 4, 2010

Today I spoke on the relationship between technical documentation and accessibility for a W3C event at the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam.

DITA-OT: Scaling Images in PDF Output

March 14, 2010

When generating PDF output via DITA Open Toolkit, users often stumble over image scaling issues. You can make images fit by setting dimensions and resolution.

2009

Snow Leopard Services: Set ZIP File Date

November 22, 2009

With Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard, you can create a system service to compress files or folders and set the ZIP file modification date to the date of the contents.

Think Twice Before Firing Editors

November 12, 2009

Last week the Toronto Star epitomized the recent decline of the newspaper industry by firing a hundred members of its pre-publishing and editorial divisions.

What Makes Good Information Design

November 10, 2009

Information is Beautiful — David McCandless ponders the nature of information design as the intersection of accuracy, relevance, usefulness, and structure.

What’s New in FrameMaker 9

January 23, 2009

If you’re looking for specifics on the new features, Adobe provides a detailed description in the FrameMaker 9 Reviewer’s Guide.

Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2

January 23, 2009

Adobe launched Technical Communication Suite Version 2, with Photoshop CS4 and Presenter 7 along with updated versions of the apps in the previous version.

DITA-OT 1.5 Milestone 10

January 21, 2009

Today Robert Anderson announced the availability of Milestone 10 of the DITA Open Toolkit version 1.5.

Customizing PDF2 Output

January 15, 2009

When building PDFs for different products with DITA Open Toolkit, you can store customizations in separate folders and reference them with customization.dir.

2008

DITA for WordPress

December 12, 2008

Claude Vedovini has released a set of plugins for the DITA Open Toolkit and WordPress that allow you to publish DITA content to a WordPress site.

Apple Xserve Field Guide

November 25, 2008

Apple has released the Xserve Field Guide, a web app for service technicians that need quick access to server maintenance information during on-site repairs.

Building Apple Help with OmniOutliner

October 9, 2008

William Van Hecke, Omni Group’s User Experience Lead has released Helpify, a Python script that turns OmniOutliner files into Apple Help books.

VMware Fusion 2.0 and CVSNT

September 18, 2008

VMware released its Mac virtualization product with an extremely annoying incompatibility — it won’t work properly with Windows systems running CVSNT.

Moving (renaming) Files in CVS

September 5, 2008

Once of the main complaints about the CVS version control system is that it’s difficult to move or rename files as your project structure changes.

iChm Adds Index Search

September 4, 2008

Keeping up the pace of nearly weekly releases, iChm Version 1.3 now allows you to search the index.

iChm Adds Index Support

August 27, 2008

Shortly after the release of iChm 1.1.1, Robin Lu has responded to popular demand and updated his CHM Reader for Mac OS X with support for indexes.

RenderX XEP Setup in oXygen

August 7, 2008

Recently, a client asked how to set up the RenderX XSL FO processor to transform DITA maps to PDF with oXygen XML Editor on Mac OS X.

Upgrading WordPress via Subversion

August 6, 2008

David Peralty has a nice tutorial on using Subversion to keep WordPress current by checking out the latest code directly from the Automattic repository.

Clever Title Case Perl Script

May 21, 2008

John Gruber has released a script that transforms selected text into title case based on guidelines from the New York Times Manual of Style.

FrameMaker 8.0.3 Patch Available

May 13, 2008

The FrameMaker 8.0.3 patch release addresses a long list of bugs and workflow issues, including the proper resolution of DITA content references.

oXygen 9.2 Improves DITA Support

May 11, 2008

oXygen XML Editor 9.2 includes a new XML Author mode and DITA Maps Manager with a streamlined interface for content authoring and common map editing tasks.

Adobe RoboHelp Packager for AIR

April 28, 2008

A new Adobe Labs download allows you to roll a RoboHelp project into a standalone app that runs on the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) platform.

Spaces in HTML Help Project Paths

March 18, 2008

Like so many other applications, Microsoft’s HTML Help Workshop often chokes on project files whose paths contain spaces.

FrameMaker 8.0.2 Update Available

February 6, 2008

Mahesh Gupta, Adobe’s FrameMaker Product Manager announced the availability of the Version 8.0.2 update in a post on the Technical Communication blog.

Sharing DITA-OT in OS X & Boot Camp

January 14, 2008

How to use a single installation of the DITA Open Toolkit on your Windows partition to generate output from either operating system environment.

2007

DITA-OT 1.4.1 Released

December 3, 2007

DITA Open Toolkit 1.4.1 includes bugfixes and minor enhancements to provide greater control over the output directory and improve error reporting.

SnagIt for Free!

November 27, 2007

TechSmith is offering version 7.2 of their Windows screenshot tool SnagIt for free to attract users to the latest version (8.2).

tekom for Runaways

November 11, 2007

At the tekom conference this week, English presentations were featured prominently as the organization strives to build an international reputation for itself.

Aptana Studio 1.0 Released

October 30, 2007

The open source Web development environment formerly known as the Aptana IDE has been re-christened as “Aptana Studio” and released as Version 1.0.

CHM Viewers for Mac OS

October 24, 2007

A handful of open source & shareware apps provide Mac users access to Windows help files in the Compiled HTML Help (CHM) format.

Automator Workflow: Set ZIP File Date

October 18, 2007

When you compress a file or folder in the Finder via the Create Archive command, a ZIP file is created using the current date as modification date.

CTRL-clicking in VMware Fusion

October 10, 2007

If you Enable Mac OS keyboard shortcuts option in VMware Fusion, Mac keys are passed on to the VM, but you can still send the CTRL key if you need to.

Aptana Milestone 9 Released

August 28, 2007

A new version of Aptana updates PHP support with Code Assist on PHP functions and parameters, improved PHP syntax colorization, and a PHP outliner.

SCPlugin — Subversion Client for Mac

August 28, 2007

There’s now a Mac equivalent for TortoiseSVN: SCPlugin is a free, open-source utility that displays the status of your version-controlled files in the Finder.

CSS Redundancy Checker

August 27, 2007

Tom Armitage has built a CSS Redundancy Checker that scans a CSS file for selectors that are not used by any HTML files in a specified directory.

HumaneText.service

August 24, 2007

A new system-wide Mac OS X service converts Markdown to XHTML (and vice versa) with keyboard shortcuts.

DITA-FMx Plug-in for FrameMaker

August 21, 2007

DITA-FMx is a new Adobe FrameMaker plugin from Leximation and Silicon Publishing that extends DITA support and fixes bugs in the Application Pack for DITA.

DITA Open Toolkit 1.4

August 15, 2007

Version 1.4 of the DITA Open Toolkit is now available, including support for new DITA 1.1 elements such as bookmaps, index-see and index-see-also entries.

OASIS Approves DITA 1.1

August 15, 2007

The DITA Technical Committee at OASIS, the international open standards consortium, has announced the approval of DITA version 1.1 as an OASIS Standard.

Sarah O’Keefe on FrameMaker 8

August 10, 2007

Sarah O’Keefe of Scriptorium Publishing has published her first impressions of FrameMaker 8, including a charming take on the significance of the new icon.

Book Tip: Bit Literacy

August 7, 2007

If you’ve ever struggled with the volume of bits that require your attention every day, a recent book by Mark Hurst of Good Experience may help.

FrameMaker 8: No DITA-OT Support

August 1, 2007

The DITA application pack previously available from Adobe Labs for FrameMaker 7.2 has been rolled in to FrameMaker 8, but drops support for DITA Open Toolkit.

FrameMaker 8 Sports Tabbed UI

July 31, 2007

Installation Surprise #2: Another thing about FrameMaker 8 that Adobe hasn’t mentioned is immediately apparent after installation — tabs and a colored toolbar.

FrameMaker 8 Requires Activation

July 31, 2007

Installation Surprise #1: One of the new FrameMaker 8 “features” Adobe carefully neglects to mention is that the application now requires activation .

CSS Framework YAML 3.0

July 17, 2007

“Yet Another Multicolumn Layout” (YAML) is an XHTML/CSS framework for creating CSS-based float layouts.

EasyEclipse 1.3

July 14, 2007

For those who find Eclipse a bit intimidating to install, configure and maintain (or just appreciate a simpler approach), there’s now an easier way.

FrameMaker 8 Prerelease Closed

July 11, 2007

Adobe is no longer accepting new participants for the Prerelease Testing Program, so FrameMaker 8 should be coming soon.

WebWorks TopicAlias Marker Changes

July 3, 2007

If you’re using custom markers to embed context information in FrameMaker source files, there are changes in the new WebWorks version you should be aware of.

New Aptana Build + iPhone Plugin

June 29, 2007

A new version of the Aptana IDE is available with a new colorization engine, Eclipse Monkey support and “tons of enhancements”.

Error opening CHMs on a network

June 28, 2007

Microsoft security “fix” 896358 prevents display of content in CHM files opened from a network. Workaround: Use UNC file paths in links or move your CHMs.

Versions: New Mac OS X Subversion client

June 18, 2007

The interface artists at Sofa are working on a new Mac OS X Subversion client called Versions, which is due out for public beta release “any moment.”

Tiling Editors in Eclipse

June 14, 2007

While test-driving Aptana recently, I found the absence of a Tile command for editor tabs absolutely vexing!

FrameMaker 8 Prerelease Beta 2

June 13, 2007

Writing in the Adobe Technical Communication blog, FrameMaker Product Manager Aseem Dokania announced that Adobe is looking for FrameMaker 8 beta testers.

Aptana — The Web IDE

June 11, 2007

Aptana is a new open-source web development IDE for building, editing, previewing and debugging HTML, CSS and JavaScript websites.