OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC

Hi --

Mixed bag in this area . . . 

Architecture spec: The architecture spec discussion about DITA support for CSH is suggestive at best. It needs a rewrite that focuses on DITA metadata and not some interaction between the DITA markup and the processed output consumed by CSH systems. A brief summary of what <resourceid> offers and a brief example might do it. I can help if you want some rewrite copy. 

I'll add -- given the limited amount of processor support for the <resourceid> metadata (Oxygen WebHelp, DITA-OT) and the lack of 21st Century CSH applications, we ought to consider removing this section in the architecture spec section entirely and relying on the <resourceid> reference documentation. Traffic on DITA users about CSH has been very light (10 postings in 10 years by my informal count). 

<resourceid> reference doc: This is in pretty good shape. It needs a little better example, but it's OK.

ServiceNow uses <resourceid> heavily for embedded help as implemented in the ServiceNow platform, which enables both connection from UI components to in-product assistance and from the product to the published docs on our main doc site.

Our current doc site vendor, Zoomin, supports the use of resourceid values in URLs (so-called "csh" links of the form https://service-now.com/docs/csh?context=some-resource-id&version=latest).

We will be preserving this functionality in future systems and have implemented it in our home-grown internal docs preview server.

Since I'm the last one to touch the resourceid design, I'd be happy to take the action to revise the current CSH topics.

I do agree with Stan that legacy help systems (i.e., WinHelp, JavaHelp) are probably no longer relevant.

Cheers,

E.

_____________________________________________

Eliot Kimber

Sr. Staff Content Engineer

O: 512 554 9368

servicenow

servicenow.com

LinkedIn | X | YouTube | Instagram