introduction.xml

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<!DOCTYPE concept PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Concept//EN" "concept.dtd">
<concept id="concept_gpb_hwf_23">
 <title>About this article</title>
 <shortdesc>Structured documents can provide a simple and reliable way to write and manage policy
  and procedure documents.</shortdesc>
 <prolog>
  <author>John Gordon Tait</author>
  <copyright>
   <copyryear year="2012-2013"/>
   <copyrholder>John Gordon Tait</copyrholder>
  </copyright>
 </prolog>
 <conbody>
  <p>This article is written for someone writing or managing policy and procedure documents, and
   standards documents of any kind. (I will use these terms interchangeably.)</p>
  <p>Can the technology and technique called DITA help? Well, perhaps. There are some very real
   advantages to trying DITA for this purpose, and some challenges. If you are involved in managing
   standards, I think it could be well worth trying.</p>
  <p>The existing literature on DITA seems to be written by<ul id="ul_tdm_4xr_h3">
    <li>originators and implementators of the DITA specification, who are perhaps not aware of the
     specific needs of <i>standards</i> authors</li>
    <li>consultants of various kinds, who might quite naturally emphasise some of the benefits and
     less of the disadvantages, and who also might try to solve unnecessary technical problems</li>
    <li>technical writers in the specific fields of product documentation and, more especially,
     computer software documentation. This is a quite different genre from standards. These writers
     might be focused on less relevant techniques when applied specifically to standards.</li>
   </ul></p>
  <p>Most reference works to DITA have a slant towards localisation and translation costs.
   Localisation and translation isn’t usually of interest when writing policy and procedure
   documents. Other DITA reference works expect the content to be in the genre of product
   information, where DITA’s core support and communities seems to reside.</p>
  <p>This article argues the case for using DITA for standards. It doesn't contain many technical
   details, because these are available elsewhere by people far better qualified than me.</p>
  <p>It was written in DITA using an XML editor called oXygen Author. It was easy to write using
   DITA. Let's explore how DITA might, or might not help you to write policy and procedure standards
   documents.</p>
 </conbody>
</concept>