XML, DITA, and Content Management Systems
Market overview of recommendable XML and DITA solutions and content management systems for creating technical documentation and user assistance (user manuals, online help systems)
On this page:
WYSIWYG-like XML editors for writing technical documentation
Content management systems and documentation project management systems
Transformation, rendering and presentation tools
Migration and conversion tools
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XML editor with excellent support for DITA. Also comes with its own converter to WebHelp and the option to style PDF with CSS. Another interesting feature is that <oxygen/> also has in integrated Markdown editor and can integrate Markdown documents into DITA projects. Contributors and reviewers can use a simplified web editor. Price: approx. $549 (“Professional”) and $706 (“Enterprise”); Web Author approx. $2400 per year for 5 users XMetaL Price: not published Arbortext Price: not published Adobe FrameMaker Price: approx. €1370; also available as part of the Technical Communication Suite Xeditor Web-based WYSIWYG XML editor. Price: not published UltraXML Price: not published XMLmind XML Editor Price: approx. €300; there’s also a free personal edition available (limited set of features; noncommercial use only) Xopus Web-based WYSIWYG XML Editor with support for DITA. Price: not published FontoXML Web based XML editor especially designed for subject matter experts and occasional content contributors to create structured content. DITA compatible. Price: not published; DITA editor for small teams free Quark XML Author for Microsoft Word Lets you create valid XML documents in the familiar authoring tool Microsoft Word. Price: not published http://www.quark.com/en/Products/Quark_XML_Author/ Simply XML Content Mapper Lets you generate reusable XML content right from Microsoft Word. Price: not published CORENA Studio Price: not published https://www.flatironsjouve.com/corena-studio/ AuthorBridge Authoring solutions for subject matter experts (SMEs) and other occasional contributors. Price: not published http://www.stilo.com/authorbridge-landing-page/ Codex Easy to use DITA editor specifically designed for engineers who don’t want to spend much time on writing and editing. Price: free (freeware) Vex Visual XML editor based on Eclipse. Comes with DITA and DocBook integrations. Price: free (open source) |
AMS Comprehensive authoring and documentation management system that covers all major tasks of documentation projects, including project management, text authoring, image editing, video creation, reviewing, translation, plus flexible and automated single source publishing into various formats. Price: approx. $249 per month per user https://www.madcapsoftware.com Description supplied by vendor: easyDITA Complete, web-based DITA solution. Price: starting at approx. $260 a month per user expeDITA DITA content collaboration tool. Price: free (open source) DocZone DITA Hosted XML content management and single-source publishing solution, combined with server-based translation memory. Price: not published https://www.orbistechnologies.com/doczone XML Documentation Add-on for Adobe Experience Manager DITA CCMS to dynamically deliver DITA content to Experience Manager. Price: not published https://www.adobe.com/products/xml-documentation-add-on-for-experience-manager.html Bluestream XDocs CCMS DITA component content management system. Includes both an XML editor and a publishing engine, making it an out-of-the box DITA CMS. Price: not published Dox Web-based, DITA content management system for collaborative authoring, publishing and management of technical documentation. Price: staring at approx. $198 per month SiberSafe XML component content management systems (CCMS) for DITA, DocBook, S1000D, and MIL-STD-2361. Price: not published DITAToo Simple management system for DITA content. Price: approx. $950 Dx4 Microsoft SharePoint-based DITA collaboration platform. Writers and subject-matter expert can participate in writing and publishing structured content. Price: not published CloudDrafts On-premises cloud solution for managing technical communication projects and to support collaboration. Price: not published XML Director XML content management system. Manages the conversion of DOCX to XML and vice versa, the conversion of XML to HTML, PDF, and EPUB, Pub, plus the publication and distribution of the generated content. Price: free (open source) XaitPorter Cloud-based document collaboration solution not limited to technical documentation. Price: not published
Some tools listed in other sections partly provide similar features. Also look at: Web-based help authoring tools and online documentation tools Tools with a special focus on building knowledge bases for customer self-service and and FAQ
Some upscale DITA and non-DITA content management and authoring systems are available from: https://www.cdgnow.com/solutions/software-for-technical-publications/inmedius-spectrum/ http://www.ec-systems.eu/en/home/ http://www.gds.eu/de/redaktionssysteme.html https://technicaldocumentation.services |
DITA Open Toolkit Transforms XML DITA content into deliverable formats such as HTML and PDF. Price: free (open source) DocBook DocBook XSL stylesheets and other tools. Price: free (open source) https://sourceforge.net/projects/docbook/ XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac) Alternative to the DITA Open Toolkit. Enables you to convert DITA to XHTML, HTML, browser-based help, CHM, EPUB, PDF, and others. Price: free (open source) WebWorks ePublisher Can be used to convert DITA to WebHelp and other formats. Price: not published DITA2Go Converts DITA files to HTML/XML, Help, and Word. Price: free (freeware) SuiteHelp DITA Open Toolkit plug-in to transform DITA content to professional WebHelp. Price: not published http://suite-sol.com/products/suitehelp/ Publican DocBook building tools for creating PDF, WebHelp, and other output formats. Price: free (open source) https://sourceware.org/publican/ DITA2wiki Publishes DITA content to Confluence. Price: free (open source) https://sourceforge.net/projects/dita2wiki/ Prince Converts HTML, XHTML, and XML based documents (such as DITA) into PDF. Documents can be styled with CSS. Price: starting at approx. $495 Vivliostyle Formatter Print formatter that generates PDF files from HTML+CSS or from EPUB files. Price: not published Antenna House Formatter Price: starting at approc. $400 DITA InPrint Publishes DITA XML content to PDF, Microsoft Word, and Apache OpenOffice Writer documents, using templates designed in OpenOffice Writer. Price: spprox. $1995 TopLeaf XML Publisher and TopLeaf XMetaL Plugin Price: not published RenderX XEP Engine Price: approx. $400 XMLmind XSL-FO Converter XSL-FO processor. Converts XSL-FO to RTF, WordprocessingML (can be opened in Word 2003+), Office Open XML and OpenOffice. Price: approx. €245 Saxonica XSLT and XQuery processing tools. Price: free, open source Home Edition; commercial Professional and Enterprise Editions (approx. £60 / £360) Apache FOP Print formatter driven by XSL-FO. Primary output target is PDF. Price: free (open source) |
Stilo Migrate Enables users to upload documents in proprietary formats, including Word and FrameMaker, and converts them to DITA XML. Price: not published ConverToo Converts Word files to DITA. Works even with poorly formatted documents by looking at the visual appearance of the content rather than on paragraph and character styles. Price: depends on the size of the documents to convert; $1 per page with a discount for large documents DITA to WordPress Import Tool Import module that takes the two-pane browser-based help output from the DITA Open Toolkit and imports the hierarchy of XHTML pages into WordPress. Price: free (open source) https://journalized.zed1.com/wordpress-plugins/dita-to-wordpress-import-tool/ X-ICE Converts unstructured data from Microsoft Word files into XML. Price: free (open source) http://www.turnkey.com.au/xice_dl.html upCast Converts Word to XML and vice versa. Price: not published |
WinANT Windows interface to the Ant build utility, for the purpose of processing DITA documents. Price: free (open source) https://sourceforge.net/projects/winant-echidna/ DITA-OT Markdown plug-in Enables you to use Markdown DITA as source files for the DITA Open Toolkit. Price: free (open source) https://github.com/jelovirt/dita-ot-markdown DITA-FMx Set of plug-ins and structure applications that let you create and edit DITA XML files in FrameMaker. Provides a complete DITA authoring and publishing solution. Price: approx. $235 DITA Compare Compares DITA documents and adds revision flags or status attributes showing the changes between the different versions. You can use this for review purposes, or you can process the attributes in your publishing pipeline and add styling or change bars to your published documents. Price: not published https://www.deltaxml.com/products/compare/dita-compare/ DITA Merge Takes two or more DITA files and merges changes. Conflicts can be managed interactively or automatically by XPath-based rules. Price: not published https://www.deltaxml.com/products/merge/xml-merge/ dita-ot-pdf-css DITA Open Toolkit plugin to generate PDF output using CSS Paged Media (requires one of the commercial PDF formatters PDFReactor or Vivliostyle). Price: free (open source) |
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This page was last updated 04/2019
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