DITA-Word Development

The development process of DITA-Word is wrapped in layers of software technologies. At its core are XML and the DITA-OT implementation of best practice pattern architecture for information typing. Wrapped around this is the resulting capability associated with DITA, specialization and destination transformations. Outside this are tools to interact with all this DITA. DITA-Word leverages the windows API with VBA Word Add-in that augments the Word UI to open edit and save DITA files.

The standard Word XML support can not handle the modification of DITA files because MSXML imposes certain rules when it comes to reading and writing XML that are not fully compatible with the DITA-OT. Additionally some understanding of XML is required to interact with DITA file because word treats them as XML. This second reason is also the argument for not using commercially available XML editors.

• BUGS
  DITA-Word BUGS are located here.
• Evaluation of Mapping of DITA Elements to Word Styles
  The mapping of DITA element tags that can be resolved as styled paragraphs in Word is being investigated. Some elements are containers of others elements that in turn contain the text that is rendered in word.
• List of Possible Improvements
  DITA-Word as with any software product can be infinitely improved. Historically this meant adding features onto features that in some cases made simple programs quite complicated. Because the prime objective of DITA-Word is to “Keep things simple”, possible improvements must be focus of making thing simple.
• Ant Debug Clues
  A quick reference for Ant Debug Clues is provided in this topic.
• New object model to generically manage DITA files
  Creating a new DITA-Word model necessary so specialized DITA file elements can be initiatively mapped to an appropriate set of style types and processing pattern for managing it’s structure use as specified by DTD and schema. An info-type called ditamangestyle will be specialized from topic. The structure ditamangestyle will be such that DITA-Word can interpret how topic will be managed in DITA-Word. will have a ditamangestyle file that informs DITA-Word how to process and display it.
• VB Base Processing
  Development of as VB DLL for processing of DITA files into deliverables, mirroring those processes performed by the DITA OT is documented under this topic.