Just spent most of last week at EclipseCon 2008 for the first time. It was a great trip where I met a host of people and really had a chance and time to investigate some technologies I was interested in. Basically I had some ideas on how other Eclipse project technologies like BIRT and Mylyn could be merged into future releases of Carbide to help our users in their day-to-day development. I left with a few ideas churning in my noggin, and while they still need some investigation they do look promising.
One bit of technology I really became enamored with was Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), an XML based method of organizing and mapping documentation so that it can easily be output in different ways to create exactly the right manual for the job. Will see how if goes converting a small Carbide manual into DITA format to see what happens very soon now.
A big thanx to Dr. Lee Anne Kowalski for explaining it all, both in her presentation and during lunch breaks at the User Assistance table. Her presentation on 10 common UA problems solved a couple of issues that I had observed in my Carbide docs and had yet to track down. Now I don't have too, yeah!
Finally got to meet some of the CDT team including Doug Schaefer, Chris Recoskie, and others, just to put a face to the names. Good to meet you all, hope to see you next year.
1 comment:
I'm glad you got to meet Lee Anne. I worked with her on DITA ideas for Eclipse last year, and I'm glad to see that some of those ideas are progressing. Since you are in Austin, you might be interested in knowing about the local Central Texas DITA Users Group for support as you work out those ideas, or contact me directly too.
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