Easier generation of iiRDS packages...

In fall 2023, an important milestone for the international relevance of iiRDS was reached with the publication of "IEC PAS 63485:2023". Now, with the plugin, the Consortium provides an easy-to-use and customizable tool to enable many international DITA users to easily generate iiRDS packages from the DITA environment.

About DITA
Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an established authoring standard and is supported by an open source toolkit, the DITA Open Toolkit DITA-OT. With DITA-OT, output formats such as HTML, PDF and others can be generated from your DITA files. By separating information into topic types and using XML as a basis, DITA is ideally suited for technical communication. DITA enables the creation of granular information that flows into content delivery portals, chatbots and AI-based scenarios such as retrieval augmented content generation.

About iiRDS
Metadata is a prerequisite for the meaningful use of this micro-content. This is where the intelligent information Request and Delivery Standard (iiRDS) comes into play. iiRDS has been around since 2016. It is managed by the iiRDS Consortium, which consists of industrial companies, system vendors, consultants, and service providers with the Association for Technical Communication tekom Deutschland e.V. as the leading member.

Both DITA and iiRDS are topic-oriented and enable users to obtain exactly the information they need. To this end, iiRDS provides an exchange format that is frequently used to publish technical documentation from content management environments in content delivery scenarios. iiRDS defines a packaging format and an extensible metadata schema.

About the plugin
The iiRDS plugin follows the principles of DITA-OT. Even if there is no explicit metadata in the DITA file, the plugin generates useful iiRDS packages with documents, topics, topic types and a navigation structure. Since the main goal of the plugin was to simplify usage, not all iiRDS metadata is supported out of the box, but the ability to customize aspects of iiRDS packaging has been created.

In November 2023, the iiRDS Consortium commissioned the development of this plugin. Developed by Empolis Information Management and tested and documented by parson, the new plugin and further information is now available on the iiRDS website at https://www.iirds.org/tools/dita-plugin. The plugin is published under the Apache 2.0 license and is open to the DITA community for use and adaptation.

Join the webinar "Publishing with iiRDS from DITA" hosted by STC New England on March 26 from 17:00 - 18:00 (CET). Our Steering Committee member Ulrike Parson will show you how to use the plugin in your DITA environment. The webinar will be recorded and made available on our website afterwards.