DITA without the DTD

A couple of months ago, I led a training course in DITA XML. The first two days were stock slides, concerned with the DTDs, conref and conkeyref mechanism, then, the third day, the one I wrote, was entirely about the DITA philosophy, the semantic nature of the DTDs, progressive disclosure and writing great short descriptions (shortdescs).

Rupert the bear providing progressive disclosure

More recently, I've been asked to use Adobe Technical Communications Suite (TCS 3.5) to create content. As for previous assignments, the current documentation is unstructured, does not reuse content, and the help and PDFs are not  single-sourced. That is, the help systems are entirely separate from the PDF and content is copied between the two. I'm assuming this is reasonably common. The team members are all professional writers of a certain quality but, outside of word choice and a few style guide rules, the content varies quite considerably in approach and overall style.

For my part, and probably from my long term exposure to DITA XML, I have adopted many of the writing philosophies that it provides and I work them into my normal output. For instance, progressive disclosure. If I am writing an introduction in a chapter, I don't write, "This chapter tells you about..." and list the subjects, I write a summary that includes high level facts from the subject matter and let the reader make the assumption that this is the subject of the chapter.

Then it hit me, why not formally introduce the writing rules of progressive disclosure and short descriptions into the current writing guide. Why not aim for a DITA-like layout in tasks? Why not, as a team, plan the information set with Task, Concept and Reference topics as if we were using DITA. The double-benefit of this approach is that it results in more consistent documentation, and, should the decision be made in the future to move to DITA XML, we have topics that are ready for the transition.

Comparing Snagit with Microsoft Clip Organiser and Snipping Tool

I'll be honest. I've never purchased a license for TechSmith Snagit. In earlier versions of Windows, I've always used ALT+PrtScn and Windows Paint. However, the other authors here use Snagit and expect me to use it too, and, I'm a big fan of TechSmith Corporation. I use Camtasia, Jing and Morae when I can and they are excellent tools. For me, these tools set the bar in usability.

So, I like Snagit because it is shiney and easy to use. But, can I just use Windows Clip Organizer and Snipping Tool to replace the ever-so-useful Snagit? While the snipping tool allows you to save as PNG, it doesn't integrate at all with the Clip Organizer except through copy and paste.

The first hurdle with Microsoft Clip Organizer is that it doesn't offer a Save As option. In fact, it doesn't offer Save at all. However, with a little investigation, I discovered that it automatically stores images in a folder called Microsoft Clip Organizer in My Pictures.

But, these are uncompressed bitmap files which are unsuitable for most uses. Ideally for my needs, they need to be PNG files. If I right-click on them, guess which application presents a "convert" option - Snagit of course.

The next hurdle is that the Clipping Tool only offers free-form, rectangular, window, or full screen clips – only a slight improvement on ALT+PrtScn. Snagit offers a whole bunch of different capture options including special features like scrolling through web pages and list boxes. Without Snagit, I'm stuck with connecting these together in Paint.net.

Finally, Snagit stores all the images you have previously captured in a database that displays across the bottom of the Snagit Editor. That's exactly what Microsoft Clip Organizer does too. It's main feature in fact. You can assign keywords/tags and a captions but, and it is a big BUT, you can't decide the filename or format and so you can't recognize them outside clip editor.

So, I'll stop there. I think Microsoft Clip Organizer and Snipping Tool fail when compared with Snagit in the following important ways:

• From Snipping Tool, you don't get an automatic database of previous clips
• From Snipping Tool, the editing and highlighting is unconstrained and scruffy
• The Snipping Tool is not integrated with Clip Organizer
• From Clip Organizer, you can't save files as a different type or rename them
• From Clip Organizer, you can't edit files or launch their default editor

A little more integration between the two tools would be a very good thing but, for now, I think that Snagit is an investment worth making.