I’ve been thinking about DITA, partly because of the comments from Michael Priestley regarding my previous DITA post, but also because I recently had to prepare a quote for a prospective client.

On one hand, I still maintain that a generic structure can practically never be as immediately relevant to a client than a structure tailored for their needs. I’ve seen this happen many times in the past, having to compare various so-called industry standards with the actual needs of my clients. Structures have mapped poorly, which is to be expected, but the same has been true with meta-data which, in a way, is more surprising, considering that meta-data should be something the industry standards get right.

On the other hand, recently, after my latest DITA blog, a prospective client requested a quote for replacing their current CMS. They’ve been authoring topic-oriented pieces of information for online publishing, with the topics sometimes collected in larger PDFs printed out and placed in binders. What they wanted was better version handling, integration with PDM applications, and an environment that would better support the authoring of individual topics published in various contexts. There was very few obstacles in the way of company-specific structures or meta-data.

Individual, loose topics, published in various contexts and deliverables, mostly online, sometimes on paper but as collections in binders. Hmm… where have I heard this line of thinking before?

Knowing how several editors out there have feature-rich DITA support and are easily adaptable, the quote was quite easy to prepare. It’s certainly easier to offer a figure when many of the unknowns are already taken are of, and this one practically screamed DITA.

Maybe the RFQ was a practical joke from the DITA folks. You’d tell me, right?