S1000D and DITA

Some of you may be interested to hear that the OASIS organisation is hosting a group to discuss whether or not there should be a group to discuss the viability of a technical committee to look into running a project. The object of this project, if there is enough support, is to work towards mapping S1000D structures across into DITA. (DITA is an OASIS XML Markup based standard.)

The purpose of this is to attempt get a completely interoperable system for the bi-directional movement of data. In looking at some of the previous attempts, in 2004 I think this started as an idea and seemed to get nowhere. However, with a much bigger base of DITA users, and certainly far more people using S1000D there may now be enough momentum and interest to work on this.

Which Spec should we use?

You may remember that in an earlier posting I indicated how we at Mekon had come up with a relatively simple rule of thumb as to which Spec should be used.

If the subject of the publication is purchased by a part number and spares are also purchased by a part number then most likely S1000D is for you.

If the subject is a design, or perhaps a software project for example then probably DITA is for you.

As a crude start this seems to work quite well.

The advantages of interoperability

Without a doubt the ability to migrate information from one specification to the other should provide very advantageous.

I can foresee several likely scenarios where a project using S1000D could use material produced using DITA. Providing a well structured migration route would make 'borrowing' material from another source a much better and safer prospect. Because the route is going to be well known there may well be simple tools
available to ease the pain even further.

Of course the reverse is also true, probably more so because, of course, in S1000D we have a need to identify each chunk of information with the Data Module Code and this does not occur in DITA.

It will be very interesting to see if the group gets started to produce the interoperability/mapping information in a formal way.

Dublin Core

There is an area of common ground in both Specifications in that the The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (Dublin Core) forms an integral part of the structures. You can find out more the principles etc of Dublin Core this from this site.

The S1000D has the Dublin Core elements within the IDSTATUS area. Just how much use is being made of this metadata provision is unclear, but when there is a need to intelligently extract information from vast quantities of data then this has to be a good start.

Starter Packs

The two methods of working also have something else in common. Adobe have released starter packs for FrameMaker for both S1000D and DITA. Whilst I have looked at the S1000D starter pack I have not has exposure as yet to the DITA starter pack. I will try and get one of Mekon's DITA people to do a brief bit for the Blog.

What I do know is that Mekon is in the final stages of producing a DITA-S1000D White paper. I will let you know when this is available and how to get it.