XML, DITA, and Content Management Systems for Technical Documentation
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
For information on the indicated price levels , see Price Levels.
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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 level: medium XMetaL Price level: not published Arbortext Price level: not published Adobe FrameMaker Price level: medium Xeditor Web-based WYSIWYG XML editor. Price level: not published UltraXML Price level: not published XMLmind XML Editor There’s also a free personal edition available with a limited set of features and for noncommercial use only. Price level: medium FontoXML Web based XML editor especially designed for subject matter experts and occasional content contributors to create structured content. DITA compatible. DITA editor for small teams is free. Price level: not published Simply XML Content Mapper Lets you generate reusable XML content right from Microsoft Word. Price level: not published CORENA Studio Price level: not published https://www.flatironssolutions.com/corena-studio/ Codex Easy to use DITA editor specifically designed for engineers, who don’t want to spend much time on writing and editing. Price level: free (freeware) Vex Visual XML editor based on Eclipse. Comes with DITA and DocBook integrations. Price level: 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 level: high https://www.madcapsoftware.com Heretto CCMS Enterprise-grade DITA-based component content management system. Price level: not published RSuite Component content management and publishing solution. Price level: not published https://www.orbistechnologies.com XML Documentation Add-on for Adobe Experience Manager DITA CCMS to dynamically deliver DITA content to Experience Manager. Price level: not published https://www.adobe.com/products/xml-documentation-for-experience-manager.html Bluestream XDocs DITA 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 level: high DITAToo Simple management system for DITA content. Price level: medium Dx4 Microsoft SharePoint-based DITA collaboration platform. Writers and subject-matter expert can participate in writing and publishing structured content. Price level: not published CloudDrafts On-premises cloud solution for managing technical communication projects and to support collaboration. Price level: 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 level: free (open source) XaitPorter Cloud-based document collaboration solution not limited to technical documentation. Price level: not published
Some tools listed in other sections partly provide similar features. Also look at:
Some upscale and customizable DITA and non-DITA content management and authoring systems are available from (listed in alphabetical order): https://www.boeingservices.com/boeing-spectrum/ https://www.ec-systems.de/de/home/ https://www.fischer-information.com https://www.gds.eu/en/content-management-solutions https://www.oneil.com (NEW ENTRY) https://www.xplm.com/publisher/
Systems with a special focus: OnPlan Builder (NEW ENTRY) Solution for building and managing work procedures and maintenance instructions for large industrial assets. Price level: not published SEQUENCE (NEW ENTRY) System to create work instructions for manufacturing enterprises. Price level: not published |
DITA Open Toolkit Transforms XML DITA content into deliverable formats such as HTML and PDF. Price level: free (open source) DocBook DocBook XSL stylesheets and other tools. Price level: 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 (WebHelp), CHM, EPUB, PDF, and others. Price level: free (open source) https://www.xmlmind.com/ditac/ WebWorks ePublisher Can be used to convert DITA to WebHelp and other formats. Price level: not published DITA2Go Converts DITA files to HTML/XML, various compiles help formats, and Word. Price level: free (freeware) TopLeaf Can produce various outputs like PDF from XML content. Has a a visual PDF layout formatter and DITA plugins for Oxygen XML Editor, XMetaL Author, and the DITA Open Toolkit. Price level: not published MiramoPDF Supports document re-designs via a GUI without the need for XSLT or other programming. Can be integrated with Oxygen XML Editor or the DITA Open Toolkit. Price level: not published LayoutFX Enables you to customize layouts for DITA content in a graphical, no-code user interface. Price level: not published Antenna House Formatter Powerful automated PDF publishing software for XML, DITA, and S1000D data. Can use XSL-FO or CSS. Price level: medium Publican DocBook tools for creating PDF, WebHelp, and other output formats. Price level: free (open source) https://sourceware.org/publican/ DITA2wiki Publishes DITA content to Confluence. Price level: free (open source) https://sourceforge.net/projects/dita2wiki/ Prince Converts HTML and XML based documents (such as DITA) into PDF. Documents can be styled with CSS. Price level: medium Vivliostyle CSS typesetting engine. Price level: free (open source) RenderX XEP Engine Converts XML documents into printable documents, such as PDF, PostScript, AFP, XPS, PPML, SVG and HTML. Uses XSL Formatting Objects to do so. Price level: medium 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 level: medium Saxonica XSLT and XQuery processing tools. Price level: diverse Apache FOP Print formatter driven by XSL-FO. Primary output target is PDF. Price level: free (open source) |
Stilo Migrate Enables users to upload documents in proprietary formats, including Word and FrameMaker, and converts them to DITA XML. Price level: 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. The price depends on the size of the documents to convert. Price level: diverse 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 level: free (open source) https://journalized.zed1.com/wordpress-plugins/dita-to-wordpress-import-tool/ upCast Converts Word to XML and vice versa. Price level: not published |
WinANT Windows interface to the Ant build utility, for the purpose of processing DITA documents. Price level: 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 level: 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 level: low 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 level: 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 level: 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 level: free (open source) |
This page was last updated 09/2022
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