Converting Legacy Content to DITA

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The purpose of this group is to share information on recrafting legacy content so that it can be used in the DITA environment

Members: 39
Created By: Mark Gross
Latest Activity: May 7

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DITA-izing Your Documents: Five Issues to Think About When Converting Your Legacy Publications to DITA

Converting your legacy document collections to any XML markup scheme presents challenges. While the promise of DITA is great, converting legacy documentation presents many new challenges. This arti... Continue

Tagged: dita, content, xml, legacy, conversion

Started by Scott Abel May 5

How to decide what to convert
3 Replies

A question I often hear is "how do I decide what's worth converting?" -- that's very hard to answer in a vacuum. I was wondering if people would share their observation from their experience.

Started by Mark Gross. Last reply by Mikhail Vaysbukh, PMP Mar 26.

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Comment by Mike Austin on April 2, 2008 at 2:37pm: This is perhaps a simplistic answer but we have established the general policy that we will convert legacy content as needed for new document releases. And the complexity and size of some of our documents may dictate that we will convert only a fraction of the content off the bat. This also means that there will be significant portion of our legacy content that never gets converted.

Comment by Mike McNamara on March 26, 2008 at 3:10pm: Hi,

If you missed today's 'Xpress DITA Enterprise Suite for Word and SharePoint' webinar and you're in U.K. on the 10th April; you can see it again along with a full demonstration (as well as a number of other XML production tools) at a one-day seminar that I have organised in conjunction with X-Window Ltd. Full details can be at www.x-window.co.uk/events. Only a few places are left, so hurry before they are all filled!

Mike

Comment by Bradley Shoebottom on March 23, 2008 at 12:35am: Our company has discovered it is worth converting legacy content if: the product still has significant market share, a expected release lifespan of 5+ years, a mjor release per year/1.5 years, new content will account for 20% content growth per year, if the content can be shared acorss similar products (say at least 20% resus between sister devices (telco product here), and it may even be worth if if there is significant eLearning that needs to be done. The majic numerb seems to be at least 20% re-use. The last qualifier might be if the content is already a mess structurally speaking, converting to say DITA XML can force a institution revolution that may be needed baring any other re-use potential.

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