*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.

*instinctools will open a new horizon in structured documentation by launching its DITAworks on June 22, 2009. DITAworks is a software solution that supports the entire lifecycle of documentation management including modeling, creating and publishing based on its inherent DITA Architecture.

Stuttgart, Germany, June 19, 2009 – *instinctools GmbH, a company specializing in Information management solutions and services, is going to launch DITAworks at the 9th German Single Source Forum in Munich on June 22, 2009. DITAworks helps to develop and manage structured documentation like product descriptions, training materials, process documentation, user manuals and online helps. The focus areas of DITAworks’ current release are visual modeling, an extended Eclipse documentation package and server side publishing.

*instinctools provides application development and maintenance services for all major Eclipse components, and so it is fitting that Eclipse RCP was chosen as the technological base for DITAworks. Furthermore, special features for documenting Eclipse based applications have been added to the DITAworks solution. Some of these are DITA specialization for defining Eclipse Help deliverables, transformation and validation for Eclipse Help, full support of Eclipse contexts and indexes as well as an IDE plug-in for help context assignment and synchronization with source code.  Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of Eclipse Foundation appreciates *instinctools’ latest development and says:

“We are delighted that *instinctools is delivering this innovative technology to the growing Eclipse ecosystem.  DITAworks provides a useful tool for creating technical documentation within the Eclipse environment.”

DITAworks follows the motto “DITAworks talks DITA!” and is able to utilize the full potential of the DITA standard because of its 100% native DITA architecture. And the feature which sets DITAworks further apart from other documentation tools lies in its unique and comprehensive modeling functions that allow project-specific documentation models (DITA Specializations). The complex modeling tasks are made easy with the help of visual editors and wizards. And the definitions of the model thus defined are carried through for further tasks.

DITAworks has plenty of features for making the task of structured documentation easier and more effective. It stimulates the re-use of content according to single source principles by smart implementation of DITA specific possibilities (topics, variables, conrefs). It also improves the effectiveness of documentation planning and creation through comfortable link management and preview functions, wizards for creating objects, and smart editors for topics and maps.

More information on DITAworks and its features is available on the product site: www.ditaworks.com

About *instinctools:
*instinctools GmbH is a member of Eclipse Foundation and offers Software and Services for smart solutions in Information Management. Service offerings include appropriate software components and application architecture selection, application development and maintenance. *instinctools’ many years of experience in Java and Eclipse development help them in making their customers implement the Eclipse project strategy successfully.

For more information, please visit www.instinctools.com.

About the Eclipse Foundation:

Eclipse is an open source community whose projects focus on providing an extensive and extensible software development platform. Eclipse offers tools and environments that extend across all phases of the software development process. The Eclipse Foundation is a non-profit, member-supported organization, which has the objective to lead the Eclipse open source community and manage the individual projects of the community.

For more information about Eclipse and the Eclipse Foundation, please visit www.eclipse.org

Contact Information:

Amit Tejpaul

*instinctools GmbH

E-mail: contact (at) instinctools.com
Phone: +49 711-99 33 85 90
Fax: +49 711-99 33 85 99

www.instinctools.com
www.ditaworks.com

*instinctools GmbH, a company specializing in Information management solutions and services, announced the launch of second phase of beta for DITAworks, a new tool designed to master complex DITA documentation projects. This tool endeavors to cover the existing shortcomings regarding effective and full usage of DITA towards entire documentation life cycle.

Stuttgart, Germany, April 15, 2009 – *instinctools has launched the second phase of beta testing for DITAworks globally from immediate effect. The goal of the second phase of Beta is to expand the beta testing community for DITAworks geographically. The typical beta testers for this tool will be the Technical Editors and Information Architects, who are interested in latest developments in the area of DITA and DITA aware tools.

DITAworks helps to develop and manage structured documentation like product descriptions, training materials, process documentation, user manuals and online helps. Re-use of content according to single source principles is stimulated by smart implementation of DITA specific possibilities (topics, variables, conrefs). There are many other interesting features awaiting the testers, namely:

• Integrated offering environment
• Comfortable link management and preview functions, wizards for object creating, XML and WYSIWYG editors
• Map editors serve for planning and creating documentation deliverables
• Multiple publishing formats and conditional publishing

One of the unique features of DITAWorks is its comprehensive modeling functions that allow project specific documentation models (DITA Specializations). “Specialization opens a new dimension for customizing DITA to needs of different enterprises.” Alexej Spas, the senior IT manager at *instinctools, writes in his blog – blog.ditaworks.com. He further elaborates about the tool’s usage in this aspect“..provides much needed support to Information Architects in designing their DITA specializations by providing wizard-based visual editors for DITA information types. It is also able to import existing models from DTD or XML Schema and detect possible problems. Later, this model can be exported again to DTD or Schema.”

DITAworks has been developed on Eclipse Technology. Its production release is scheduled to be around the start of June 2009. You can learn more about the tool by visiting the www.ditaworks.com. If you want to participate in beta testing, write to Amit Tejpaul at contact at instinctools.com.

About *instinctools:

*instinctools GmbH offers Software and Services for smart solutions in Information Management. Service offerings include selecting adequate software components and application architecture, application development and maintenance.*instinctools’ many years of experience in Java and Eclipse development helps them in making their customers implement the Eclipse project strategy successfully.

Contact Information:

Amit Tejpaul

*instinctools GmbH

Sophienstr. 17

70178 Stuttgart, Germany

E-mail: contact at instinctools.com

Telefon: +49 711-99 33 85 90

Fax: +49 711-99 33 85 99

www.instinctools.com www.ditaworks.com

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