Does anyone use DITA? Is it difficult to work with?

[Tim Mantyla <TimMantyla -at- nustep -dot- com>]

Just read Tony Self's description of DITA (see link below). It sounds so 
horrifically technical I think I'll avoid DITA till the rocket scientists 
make a user-friendly HAT out of it. I'm biased with far more experience in 
the writing vs. technical side of tech writing, though.

His article: 
http://www.winwriters.com/articles/DITA_for_Help/index.html#conclusion

Other sources:
http://www.intech.com/dita/What_is_DITA.php

Cannot access because of my company anti-freeware firewall:
106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-dita1/index.html 

The best one, which still leaves DITA frustratingly opaque to me, is Scott 
Abel's article:
http://www.thecontentwrangler.com/article/thanksgiving_cooking_lessons/


Nothing I've read (in 4 or 5 sources so far) about DITA shows any 
pictorial examples. Is it so conceptual, like e=mc (squared), that it 
can't be shown using diagrams, images, etc.?

A good tech writer should be able put images into the content (a picture 
is worth a thousand words) to provide examples, or use metaphors to make 
the concept visual or in some other way easier to understand. 

Could someone on the list do this?

How about some example pages of content created by DITA, vs. content not 
created by DITA--and the advantages of one over the other? Or will that 
still be opaque because (it sounds like) DITA is a set of tools for 
creating output and does not display in the output?


Tim Mantyla
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