Roger Sheen

infotexture

Information Architecture &
Content Design Operations

Modern Web applications use fonts with scalable vector icons that render sharply at any resolution. Similar techniques can be used in DITA projects to include icons from the user interface in output.

This year at DITA Europe in Munich, I presented several options for integrating icon fonts in DITA projects with markup examples and renderer configurations that show how to include icon glyphs in multiple output formats.

The slides from my talk are available on Speaker Deck and embedded below.

The presentation sparked discussion afterwards and users from IBM and SAP expressed an interest in implementing something like this in their own projects.

Eliot Kimber suggested specializing an existing element to simplify the process of including icons and we’re considering pouring this idea into a DITA Open Toolkit plugin that would make it easier to use icon fonts in DITA projects.

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