Re: "The Death of Technical Writing, Part 1"

[Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>]

DITA pays off when you have numerous products with overlapping
features, so lots of opportunities for reuse, and/or translate into
numerous languages. It's pretty standard at large tech companies such
as Apple, IBM, and Symantec.

If you have one product in one language, a cost-benefit analysis will
almost certainly determine that the best tool is not DITA-based. I've
done such analyses four times now and the proprietary single-source
tools have compelling advantages. I do design templates that will ease
migration to DITA should that someday become worth the time and money.

On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 4:31 AM, Haim Roman <haim -dot- roman -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> [2] You spend a lot of time criticizing DITA.  I don't know it (I haven't
> actually started working as a tech writer), but it seems that one spends a
> lot of time at the beginning so that it's easier to change later, and/or to
> generate versions of the documentation in different formats.  That can
> still be a valid trade-off, no?  That's one of the things they're teaching
> in my tech writing course.
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