Structured Authoring without XML: Evaluating Lightweight DITA for Technical Documentation

摘要

Purpose: We present a proposal for HDITA, an HTML5-based version of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). We report on an exploratory study about the feasibility of using HDITA as an authoring platform for technical content. We asked how novice technical writers describe and evaluate the complexity and difficulty of the different stages of the HDITA authoring process and if novice technical writers can author effective topic-based technical content in HTML5 (HDITA) without full knowledge of XML (DITA).