Contrext, LLC provides consulting and services around helping Publishers design and implement DITA-based solutions for managing the authoring, production, and delivery of documents in digital and print forms. Our services include:
- General DITA application design
- Markup design to best adapt the DITA standard and related technologies to your specific business challenges
- Customization and implementation of output processors to produce the digital and print products you need
- Integration, configuration, and customization of DITA-aware component management systems, such as the RSuite CMS product.
- Development and validation of legacy content conversion specifications and custom tooling.
XML is a key enabling technology for any enterprise that publishes content. If you're a Publisher or a company or non-profit that publishes significant volumes of content you need XML somewhere in your publishing workflow. You also need to be able to interchange and interoperate with other Publishers, with suppliers, and licensees, with anyone who might provide you with content or who might pay you for yours. Publishers, in particular, get maximum value from their content when it can be used and reused as widely as possible with the lowest cost.
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DITA standard, as an XML-based enabling technology, provides a unique solution to the challenge of making your XML content interchangeable and interoperable.
DITA's secret sauce is "controlled extension": DITA allows you to define your own markup vocabulary within the context of basic rules that all conforming DITA applications must follow.
The promise of DITA is that, if you follow the rules, all other users of DITA and most, if not all, DITA-aware processing systems will be able to process your DITA-based content. This feature of DITA means several important things, but they all work together to ensure that DITA-based XML solutions represent the lowest startup cost, the lowest cost of ongoing maintenance, and the highest long-term value.
If you have an existing XML-based system that is not DITA-based, you have experienced the pain of traditional XML approaches that do not really enable interchange or interoperation, and the high cost of one-off systems, even those based on standards like DocBook, NLM, and TEI.
If you are working toward implementing a new XML solution, then a DITA-based solution will be your fastest, lowest-cost route to a robust, long-lived solution.
If you have a DITA-based solution and are looking to get even greater value from it then you have come to the right place.
