Creating Documentation Using Topic-Oriented Writing

by Doug Williams

This presentation is one of the best I’ve seen as an introduction to DITA. It may be of particular interest because it places DITA in the context of the Docbook version of Information Mapping, which directly or indirectly influenced so many groups at Oracle.

Topic-oriented writing at McAfee

McAfee has a relatively mature implementation of DITA. As the presentation suggests, they moved over to DITA more than a decade ago. Their moduarization of information into an “article” format is exemplary, as you can see from this example:

McAfee documentation example

They are using a full stack of the SDL customer relationship system, including SDL Tridion content management, Tridion Sites, and I believe also the Tridion review tool. Very likely they also use the SDL option that enables nearly automatic generation of marketing collateral and support content directly from their content repository. They likely are leveraging SDL’s impressive machine translation capabilities; I can see from their code that they translate to 18 languages, and apparently have four regional variations, with variables for product and feature names that likely are set by region. All in all, very impressive. But before you can soar, you have to learn to fly, and it begins with modular content. Here’s a deeper look into the HTML output:

<div class="article-entry hidden">
<article class="hascomments" data-page="bundle:mvision-endpoint-detection-and-response-product-guide/enus/GUID-ED0F11DB-66EC-4450-B911-8EA00E7985F9.html" id="bundle:mvision-endpoint-detection-and-response-product-guide/enus/GUID-ED0F11DB-66EC-4450-B911-8EA00E7985F9.html">
<body id="GUID-ED0F11DB-66EC-4450-B911-8EA00E7985F9">
<main role="main">
<article aria-labelledby="ariaid-title1" role="article">
<h1 class="title topictitle1" id="ariaid-title1"> Manage threat exclusions </h1>

<div class="body taskbody">
<p class="shortdesc"> You can view the list of existing threats that are excluded from the threat list. These threats don&#39;t appear in the
<span class="ph uicontrol">Monitoring</span> dashboard.
</p>

<div class="tasklabel"><h2 class="sectiontitle tasklabel">Task</h2></div>

<ol class="ol steps">
<li class="li step">
<span class="ph cmd">Log on to
<span class="ph">MVISION EDR</span> as administrator.
</span>
</li>
<li class="li step">
<span class="ph cmd">Click the configuration icon on the top-right corner to access the
<span class="ph uicontrol">Configuration</span> page.
</span>
</li>
<li class="li step">
<span class="ph cmd">Under
<span class="ph uicontrol">Finetune configuration</span>, click
<span class="ph uicontrol">Manage threat exclusions</span>.
</span>
</li>
<li class="li step">
<span class="ph cmd">Under existing threat exclusions:
</span>
<ul class="ul choices">
<li class="li choice">Click a listed threat to view the threat details.
</li>
<li class="li choice">Click
<span class="ph uicontrol">Delete</span> to delete a threat from the existing threat exclusions list and make it available in the
<span class="ph uicontrol">Monitoring</span> dashboard.
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</article>
</main>
</body>
</article>