*instinctools’ DITAworks Eclipse Help package has been nominated for the Eclipse Community Award for 2010 under the sub-category “Best RCP Application”. These awards are given every year by Eclipse Foundation in order to recognize and thank the individuals and technologies that make Eclipse a vibrant community.

Stuttgart, Germany, February 01, 2010 —*instinctools GmbH, a company providing software solutions and services, has announced that their Eclipse RCP-based software application for structured documentation management and extended Eclipse Help Support, DITAworks Eclipse Help Package, has been nominated for the Eclipse Community Award for 2010 under the sub-category “Best RCP Application”. The Eclipse Community Awards are aimed at recognizing the best of the Eclipse community and Best RCP application is awarded to an end-user desktop application that illustrates the most innovative use of Eclipse RCP.

In the year 2009, *instinctools showed its commitment to innovation and productivity by providing solutions to software and documentation community in general and Eclipse community in particular. It was instrumental in bringing an innovative structured documentation solution in the form of DITAworks Documentation Application in the documentation arena. It also provided DITA Visual Specialization Manager totally free of charge for the purpose of development and maintenance of publicly available DITA Specializations (Models). They have also brought productivity enhancement benefits in documentation area with solutions like full Eclipse IDE integration with their documentation application DITAworks.

DITAworks is an Eclipse-based software application which provides integrated tooling for structured documentation management according to single source principle. It is designed around DITA architecture and ensures the optimal use of DITA through its wide-ranging options. DITAworks Eclipse Help Package features functionality specifically tailored for documenting Eclipse/RCP applications and generate Eclipse Help. This package includes DITA specialization for defining Eclipse help deliverables, transformation and validation specifics for Eclipse Help. It also has full support for Eclipse Help contexts and indexes, and comfortable link management between content in different plug-ins. This package covers the limitations in the market from lack of software tools, both free and commercial, which have been hindering adoption of Eclipse help as publishing output format for DITA content.

The links between application and Eclipse Help are enabled by Eclipse context ID management and an IDE plug-in for help context assignment and synchronization with source code. This IDE plug-in helps in optimized co-ordination process between the development and the documentation teams. In designing the IDE plug-in, the best practices as well as innovative ways for effective coordination work were incorporated. The emphasis was to provide productivity benefits for documentation as well as development in terms of proper utilization of time and resources, reduction of costs, reduction of go-to-market time and overall improvement in the quality of documentation.

For more information about DITAworks, DITA-based tool for supporting full life-cycle of structured documentation, please visit www.ditaworks.com.

*instinctools GmbH has decided to provide free-of-cost licenses for its Visual DITA Specialization Manager, a manager designed to make complex DITA specialization tasks easier to work with. These free licenses will be valid for unlimited time period but limited to the development and maintenance of open DITA Specializations e.g. specializations under OASIS for different industries such as Machinery, Pharmaceutical etc. This offer is aimed at lowering the barriers to DITA usage and adoption.

Stuttgart, Germany, November 5, 2009 — *instinctools GmbH, a company providing software solutions and services, has been previously instrumental in bringing an innovative structured documentation solution in the form of DITAworks Documentation Application in the market. They have also brought productivity enhancement benefits in documentation area like full Eclipse IDE integration with their documentation application DITAworks. Now, they have decided to make a contribution to the DITA community by providing their Visual DITA Specialization Manager totally free of charge for the purpose of development and maintenance of publicly available DITA Specializations. This will provide a much needed impetus to DITA standard by lowering barriers to DITA adoption as a result of simplification of the DITA specialization process.

The Visual DITA Specialization Manager contains comprehensive modeling functions that allow development and maintenance of project specific documentation models (DITA Specializations). This application opens a new dimension in the ease of customizing DITA to specific needs in a user-friendly way. It simplifies the DITA specialization processes while providing productivity benefits in terms of lesser time, optimal quality of deliverables, and single-sourcing of the model (export of DTD and XML Schema possible). Furthermore, it can facilitate an integrated environment with 100% DITA-based tools like DITAworks. The main features of this application are listed as follows:

• Wizard-based Visual Editor for DITA specializations with support of structural, domain and attribute specializations
• Import of existing specializations from DTD.
• DITA model validation (checking for validity of specialization)
• Export of managed specializations to DTD or XML Schema
• Export of Specializations in form of DITA OT plugin
• Integration with version control

All these benefits and functionalities have been developed to give substantial support to Information Architects and Documentation Project Managers in designing and maintaining their DITA specializations by providing wizard-based visual editor for DITA information types. The development of these functionalities has been made possible through a mix of technological expertise and practical experience gained from various DITA projects.

This free-of-cost license for Visual DITA Specialization Manager will be limited to development of or working with models available publically and prohibit any commercial use of the tool other than evaluation. The license will be made available starting from the first week of December.

For more information about Visual DITA Specialization Manager from *instinctools, please visit www.ditaworks.com/modeling or write to [email protected]

For more information about DITAworks, DITA-based tool for supporting full life-cycle of structured documentation, please visit www.ditaworks.com.