AuthorBridge – Guided DITA Authoring for SMEs and occasional contributors
Presentation Abstract
Up until now there have traditionally been 4 classic models of content authoring: free-form (how it looks, not what it is), form-driven (highly constrained), structure-driven (direct XML tagging) and template-driven (constrained). Each has their relative merits, but still fall short of what is required for widespread enterprise DITA adoption. Now, with AuthorBridge from Stilo – a new low-cost, browser-based, enterprise DITA authoring tool – there is an emerging 5th model, Guided Authoring, breaking down the barriers to enterprise DITA adoption.
AuthorBridge provides all the advantages of free-form authoring (author-friendly, little or no restrictions), while ensuring that rich semantic content is generated under the covers, capturing the author intent without any of the complexity of DITA. By providing visual controls and cues, it guides the author naturally, with no explicit tagging or structure to directly manage. The document schema acts like an unobtrusive framework. When changes are made to the content, AuthorBridge automatically computes and applies the appropriate semantic markup, allowing the SME to concentrate exclusively on authoring the content. As a result, content creation is easy and efficient.
In this demo, we will show how the AuthorBridge guided authoring environment helps SMEs contribute to new and existing DITA topics while having no prior knowledge of XML.
What can attendees expect to learn?
In this session we will introduce you to an emerging 5th model for content creation – guided DITA authoring. We will demonstrate how AuthorBridge, our new web-based editor, can provide the best of all four classic models and more, while providing a paradigm shift in the affordability of structured content authoring and why it represents a significant breakthrough for the collection of contributions from SMEs with no knowledge of DITA or its complexities. Attendees will learn how the AuthorBridge guided authoring environment helps SMEs contribute to new and existing DITA topics.
Meet the Presenter
Patrick Baker is the VP, Development and Professional Services at Stilo International.
Patrick heads up all new product development at Stilo and is actively engaged in the successful deployment of content processing solutions. Major ongoing product developments include OmniMark, the leading high-performance content processing platform, Migrate, the world’s first cloud XML content conversion service and AuthorBridge, for web-based content creation. He has been associated with best practices for complex content processing for over a decade and has successfully delivered custom solutions to organizations in automotive, aerospace & defence and commercial publishing. Patrick holds a B.Sc. In Mathematics and a M.Sc. In Computer Science from McGill University.