What’s new in the 2.2 release of Adobe’s DITA CCMS

If you are reading this blog, you are either already using DITA or are seriously considering moving to DITA. Well, that is not surprising – More and more organizations are jumping onto the DITA bandwagon because of its robust framework for content reuse and topic based authoring.

Migrating DOCX to DITA made easy

However, the move to DITA can be a daunting task. One of the biggest challenges is migrating the existing content to DITA. Even if you are using DITA already, there is a high chance that you have legacy content lying around in non-DITA format or you have regular content contributions in non-DITA formats.

With the 2.2 release of XML Documentation Add-on for Adobe Experience Manager, we have introduced a way to easily convert your existing/legacy content to DITA. To begin with, this capability is available for Unstructured FrameMaker and Word content.

The conversion mechanism is bundled with the solution and works out-of-the-box. To get started, all you need to configure are the input and output directories. Then, you can simply upload the content to the platform to kick off the conversion process. The conversion is very quick and within a matter of seconds, it will start spewing out the converted DITA content!

This screenshot from the XML Documentation Add-on 2.2 for Adobe Experience Manager 6.3 shows the Microsoft DOCX to DITA conversion process running for two docx files.

Though it requires minimal configuration to get started, it provides complete control over the mapping configuration. There are extensive REST based APIs available to automate the conversion process.

Support for DITA Glossaries, Keyrefs and Subject Schemes

The 2.2 release delivers major improvements in the web-based DITA editor, which is also bundled with the solution. Besides several user experience improvements throughout the editor, we have added support for some advanced DITA features:

Support for PhotoShop, Illustrator, EPS and PDF Graphics in DITA

If your content relies heavily on graphics, then our next feature is sure to delight you. You can now pull in Photoshop, Illustrator, EPS or PDF graphics directly into DITA content. AEM creates renditions for these graphics in a variety of resolutions and image sizes. So, there is no need to save the graphic in different formats and resolutions manually. When you publish the content, the system will automatically pick up the correct rendition for this image – for e.g. a high-resolution rendition for PDF and a web rendition for a web output.

An Even Better DITA Online Editor

The web-based map editor has also been enhanced with following new features:

We have introduced a powerful new search for the ditamap editor. It makes it much more easy to find the right topics to insert into a ditamap.

This screenshot from the XML Documentation Add-on 2.2 for Adobe Experience Manager 6.3 shows the DITA MapEditor Search Dialog.

Want to know more?

If you are interested in a personal demo of the solution or understand how it can benefit your organization, you can reach out to us at techcomm@adobe.com.