DITA Authoring with oXygen XML Author

This course develops essential skills for technical communicators starting with authoring in a DITA environment. It teaches the theoretical principles of both XML and DITA, and how these principles are applied in documentation projects. It provides the foundation knowledge for working with DITA authoring, publishing, and content management software tools. It then enables participants to use oXygen Author productively to create, edit, and manage DITA topics and maps.

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Who should attend this course?

Technical communicators who are interested in, or have already started, working in a DITA environment.

Duration 3 days
Price Call for details
Location Mekon House, Sutton, London, SM1 1JN, UK, or at your premises.

Benefits

The course will boost your authoring productivity by giving you a thorough understanding of oXygen XML Author’s capabilities.

Length of course

3 days

Contact us for a quote

+44 (0)20 8722 8400 Enquiry form

Course outline

Day One (DITA orientation)

  • Business problems that XML and DITA address
  • DITA topics: information typing; decisions on granularity
  • DITA elements and adaptive content
  • DITA maps/submaps for context, organization, navigation, and reuse
  • Publishing processes and assumptions
  • Specialization and constraints: customizing your content models
  • Reuse and variability: pros and cons of the major reuse techniques including keys and profiling conditions
  • Approaches to creating and using metadata
  • Considerations in DITA content management

Day Two (basic DITA work in oXygen XML Author)

  • Using the workspace and navigating
  • Creating and managing topics
  • Editing elements in topics
  • Working with lists and tables, including headers, column settings, and cell merging
  • Working with images, including alt text and figures
  • Editing attributes, including multiple attribute values
  • Editing and managing maps and submaps, including managing content from the Map Manager
  • Working with cross-references and relationship tables

Day Three (extended DITA editing in oXygen XML Author)

  • Reusing content, including naming & filepath considerations and key-based referencing
  • Working with metadata and index entries, including topic and map metadata, and relationship between DITA and metadata standards
  • Conditional profiling and filtering
  • Working with projects and folder structures
  • Generating output using transformation scenarios
  • Reviewing and correcting content
  • Searching and replacing
  • Validating and troubleshooting

Custom training

If you have specific training needs, we can tailor a course that suits your requirements. We have designed training courses for customers using DITA in a production environment to help them get the most out of DITA. A custom course is useful if you need to:

  • Help new team members learn DITA in the context of your particular content model
  • Improve reuse and authoring productivity
  • Promote good practice

Contact us for a no-commitment chat

Contact us for a quote

+44 (0)20 8722 8400 Enquiry form