About being the “First Authoring Software to Support DITA Publishing With No Programming or Third-Party Tools Required”
The year 2006 was an exciting year, for all sorts of reasons. It was an exciting year for Author-it Software Corporation when Author-it 4.3 was released with support for the still-embryonic DITA standard. Who knew, in 2006, that DITA would come so far? (Well, we did, obviously.) As Author-it is a controlled authoring tool, built on top of a component content management system, with a multi-channel publishing engine back end, we were pretty much the first end-to-end DITA solution. (After all, end-to-end is such a fluid description. Just because we have more at the starting end (authoring), the finishing end (publishing), and that lumpy bit in the middle (content management), what’s to stop someone else from picking up the pegs and moving them closer together to create their own definition… sigh).
The independent CMS Watch published an industry report in 2008 covering DITA tools, XML, and component content management systems. As one of the few vendors providing a end-to-end DITA solution Author-it rated very highly. High praise indeed. Author-it being an out of the box solution that requires no third party tools or programming certainly helped. Interested in the report? If you are reading this you should be*. 2009 version out soon, I believe.
I don’t want to sound fussy, but first usually means… first. And 2006 is definitely before 2009. So unless I’m missing a very finely tuned definition of ‘First Authoring Software to Support DITA Publishing With No Programming or Third-Party Tools Required’ that somehow magically makes 2009 occur before 2006, I think someone at MadCap is taking liberties with the truth. Now I like Lewis Carroll and George Orwell as much as the next person but such blatant and farcical manipulation of the truth should remain in works of fiction. Or people should hire PR companies that do their homework.
Or, we could agree that MadCap has never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Lovely folks at MadCap, and Flare works very well and lots of people like it, but if no one else is going to call them on the blatantly inaccurate press releases seen over the past year, I will.
Posted by Matthew Armstrong, Sales Director Asia Pacific, Author-it Software Corporation
*From the CMS Watch website:
About the Report
The XML & Component Content Management Report 2009 provides an overview of leading CCM products as well as XML editing tools, including detailed comparative evaluations of 25 CCM vendors XML editing products.
How it will help you
The report can help your team:
- Save time in the selection process
- Create an effective vendor shortlist
- Avoid selecting the wrong product
- Budget more accurately
- Avoid painful setbacks
Who needs this report?
Check out this report if you are considering to undertake any of the following projects:
- Complex content re-use
- Extensive content translation
- Technical Documentation and other DITA projects
- Structuring common office documents
- Multichannel publishing
- Structured authoring with XML editors
- Managing information components at an enterprise level
Interesting post Matthew. You raise some valid points. In fact you inspired a blog post of my own.
Comment by Alan J. Porter — June 17, 2009 @ 10:32 am
Quite right, Matt - it’s confusing enough for folks trying to make an informed purchasing decision - without being told porkies into the bargain. It’s another example of why you have to look beyond the hype and seek out substance. Sometimes that means paying for a report, written by well-informed, objective professionals.
Comment by Emma Harding — June 21, 2009 @ 10:01 pm
Nice work Matt. It is worth pointing out the hard earned truths and highlighting when what we are told is just not quite right…
Comment by Mark Trotter — June 24, 2009 @ 10:50 am
Good point, Matt — maybe less blunt than the issue merits.
It’s part of a longer, larger pattern (e.g., fake ‘tecwriter’ websites with ‘neutral’ evaluation of authoring tools). As for Madcap’s current efforts: look at the sponsored results if you Google author-it. I’ve complained to Google. Something’s fundamentally out of whack when a search for a registered product name brings up a competitor’s sponsored link.
Comment by David Locke — July 8, 2009 @ 11:55 am
It gets better. I see that Bluestream are now also making the sames comment about being the only ‘out of the box’ DITA CMS. They’ve cunningly included other people’s software to provide authoring and publishing - something their client’s would have to do anyway. Not sure this is really what is meant by ‘out of the box’, though.
Comment by Matt Armstrong — November 1, 2009 @ 3:42 pm