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Formats and tools

By Olivier Carrère

When a company sets out to industrialize technical writing, the question of tools comes up immediately. The real issue, though, is the underlying format, not the tool.

Many vendors have built proprietary formats that only their own software can edit, locking in a captive market that has to keep paying for upgrades. An MS Word or FrameMaker file, for example, can only be edited in the tool that created it. Committing to such a format narrows a company’s options and can get expensive: every user needs a license - technical writer, occasional contributor, and translator alike.

A standard format leaves the choice of tool open A standard format leaves the choice of tool open.

Focusing on the format instead opens the door to scalable solutions. An open format - OpenDocument, or DITA XML (the only one of the two designed as an industrial format for technical writing) - isn’t tied to any single tool, so it can be edited and processed by many. And because the source format shapes the entire production chain, that choice carries more weight than any tool decision. Structured formats such as DocBook and DITA XML, governed by a standard XSD schema, can be handled from authoring through publication by a wide range of software, from free text editors to proprietary graphics suites.

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