The Best of Both Worlds: Round Trip Conversion
Imagine a situation where documentation is authored using specialized DITA and must be published in an environment that requires standard DITA. Round trip transformation from standard DITA to specialized DITA and back to standard DITA seems the best option and has some interesting challenges: How do you preserve the class information from the specialization for re-conversion and downstream processes like search engines? How does a technical writer troubleshoot and correct errors that appear during the build of the generalized DITA file if they’re only familiar with the specialized version?
The approach discussed during this presentation uses XSLT and custom macros in XMetaL Author to perform a round trip conversion of documentation files directly in the editor. The solution combines a range of approaches which can be re-used to respond to the needs of anyone investigating strategies for generating or migrating documentation.
What can attendees expect to learn?
DITA is capable of round trip specialization and generalization but this approach is rarely seen in the real world. This presentation will interest anyone who wants to know more round tripping DITA files: when to consider it and how to implement it. The information presented will equally be helpful for those who are interested in automating content generation in XMetaL Editor.
Meet the Presenter
Heather Darrow is a Publishing Systems Developer at Dassault Systèmes Simulia where she serves as a corporate resource for markup vocabularies and documentation processes, providing information, perspective, and direction for projects and internal customers.