What is DITA?
DITA stands for "Darwin Information Typing Architecture" or "Document Information Typing Architecture." DITA is an XML data model for component-based authoring and publishing. It is an open standard that is maintained by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee. DITA is commonly used among technical documentation teams.
Here are my top 10 reasons XML will improve your business (in no particular order):
Translation costs are reduced as DITA's re-use model eliminates repeated translation of duplicate content, saving time and cost.
Single-source publishing to multiple formats. No longer do you have to duplicate content to support different publishing formats. Instead, content is stored once as DITA and transformed to the desired publishing formats as needed.
Supporting new deliverable formats is much more practical as the existing content can be transformed rather than duplicated and converted.
Content can be integrated into software applications because DITA is a machine-readable data source.
Modular topic-based content can be re-used and re-assembled, allowing greater agility in how content is arranged and delivered.
DITA can eliminate much of the effort in creating tables of contents, document summaries, indices, and glossaries. And once set up, content can be rearranged without any effort to update these structures.
Content can include variations targeting specific audiences, product variations, or other contexts. The proper variation can then be selected to create targeted variations based on the same content.
Content can be shared across multiple projects, and edits to shared content can be made once and reflected across all of the projects.
Separating formatting from the content dramatically reduces the effort required for rebranding and reformatting the outputs.
Work can be more easily distributed and created in parallel, allowing greater flexibility and scalability of the content creation process.