Note: If the headline above doesn’t make sense to you – congratulations, you’ve never had to deal with DITA, which means developing content for the web probably isn’t your thing. Keep reading anyway, it’s pretty good writing.
The keystone of both MindTouch Technical Communications Suite and the MindTouch Social Documentation Solution is the Intelligent Documentation Framework (IDF). IDF was born out of the need to give technical communicators an easier way to assemble, reference and re-use their content. For readers, IDF provides an automated easy-to-use navigation that we’re so used to experiencing online. IDF is a technology/methodology hybrid, designed to deliver the fastest route to content authoring as well as the most efficient path to content discovery.
Sound familiar, TechComms? These are the same concepts that DITA set out to accomplish. However, a funny thing happened on the way to the future. DITA became a viable standard. But it also got really hard to use and follow. Ok, maybe it’s not funny, but it’s true. So true, in fact, many technical communicators are looking to alternatives. I won’t name names, but a very well known technical communicator (hint: that person is on this list) once said “I’d love a tool that allowed me to do DITA, without it being DITA”.
The Present: Knock knock.
The Future: Who’s there?
The Present: IDF.
