xmetal and dita in the marketing department: tastes great, less filling

© 2010 JustSystems Inc.1 © 2010 JustSystems Inc.

XMetaL and DITA in the Marketing Department

tastes great, less filling

© 2010 JustSystems Inc.2

Publishing product data sheets

• Previously: Word + InDesign

• Cost: $20,000/year

• 9 SKUs x 2 updates/year x $1100/update

• Average turnaround: 5 days

Slow and expensive

Challenge


• maintain product data sheets using DITA,

XMetaL and SubVersion

• publish data sheets using the DITA Open

Toolkit (DITA OT)

• save money! save time! Yay! we're done!

Solution


But...


And…


• DITA map

• title page

• callouts

• company info

Marking up the document


• page layouts

• callout text

• company info

• 2-column layout, *most* of the time…

• font treatment

DITA Open Toolkit challenges


• PDF output has a specific customization

architecture

• catalog file

• XSL template overrides

• XSL attribute sets overrides

• Fonts, background images

• Locale files for multi-language support

DITA OT Anatomy


• title page

• inner pages

• last page

Configured via

layout-masters.xml

Page layouts


• XSL:FO does not support background images

on the page level

• use CSS sprites technique on page regions

• 1 background image per page-master

• Bonus: Marketing can tweak the design without

using XSL

NB: no gaps between page regions!

FO sprites are your friend


• Override main topic

template

• create fo:markers from

title, abstract

• Display markers in the

region-before (header)

Title, tagline, summary


• <lq>, <cite> elements

mark up the callout

• Override default

template to create an

fo:marker

• Display marker

contents in the region-

start

Callout text


• Default layout is 2-

column

• Tables need to be in a

1-column layout

• Makes use of XEP’s

@span extension

• To use @span, must

be a child of the flow

2-column to 1-column layout


• A topic in the DITA map

• Use of @outputclass

• Override default

processing to create an

fo:marker

• Display marker contents

in the start region

Company Info


• Goal: make use of standard Windows fonts

• xsl:fo attribute-sets are similar to CSS

• Make use of:

– font-family, font-style, font-variant

– font-size, font-weight,

– font-stretch, letter-spacing

Fonts


Let’s compare…

~~


• simple markup to start, specialize later

• use xsl:fo sprites; no slicing, users can update

design tweaks

• use page regions, fo:markers to address layout

challenges

• @span support in XEP allows (limited) column-

switching

Takeaways


• Marketing can self-publish in minutes vs. days

• Cost: 3 days XSL development + 1 day content

migration

• 100% ROI if updates are 4x more frequent than

design changes

Next steps:

• 6 of the SKUs in XMetaL, rest to come

• More re-use across SKUs

• A4 variant for EMEA

Summary


Questions?

[email protected]

Thank you

mailto:[email protected]

xmetal and dita in the marketing department: tastes great, less filling

Technology