The distinction between technical documentation and the content that surrounds it—from upstream documents such as specifications to downstream documents such as service bulletins—has largely been artificial, and often separated by the technologies and writing structures that bind the documents together. Technical communicators keep their documents controlled, and for good reason, in structured documents, in specialty mark-up languages in specialty software. Their colleagues tend to use standard-issue software, and while they may have started off with company-issue templates, these tend to morph over time to a point being recognition or repair.

Just when it looked like these two camps would drift further apart, as DITA gave technical communicators tighter control over their content structure and wikis allowed the rest of the content to become as free-form as possible, Inmedius Software found a way to marry the two content forms in a way that considers the needs of both sides. By adding a DITA wiki to their content management suite, they have a browser-based DITA solution that can be used by non-technical content authors.

What this means for the industry is content portability, and speed of content portability. Instead of looking for Word documents on shared drives or SharePoint sites and converting it to DITA before incorporating it into a document and editing it, the content can be, simply, shared. The DITA formatting is already in place. For a glimpse into the future of a DITA-wiki hybrid model, read the case study published in the STC Intercom magazine.