Help to transform Word file to DIta

[Pandounours]

Hello,

I have a user manual to transform into dita. The word file is horrible I cant use the transform plugin. The manual is derived into 2 versions for two products but with a lot of topics in common.

So the manual have a TOC that look like this :

Introduction (there is text inside)
Part1 (little text)
Part1-Sub1 (text)
Part1-Sub2(text)
Part2 (little text)
Part2-Sub1 (text)
Part2-Sub2(text)

How you transform this structure in DITA ?

My point of view :
- create a ditamap with the name manual_base.ditamap
- Introduction is a topic
- Part1 is topic head or a topic ?
- Subtopics are topics inside the topic head ?

And for the two products, I create two ditamaps :
- product1.ditamap
- product2.ditamap
Then I do reference to the manual_base ?

Thanks for your answers sorry if I'm not so clear.

[Radu]

Hi,

Your plan looks good to me, maybe you can also post and ask around on the DITA Users List (https://dita-users.groups.io/g/main) to see what the tech writers community has to say about it.
For multiple products you can either have one DITA Map with profiling conditions inside it or multiple DITA Maps. It probably depends on how different the products are.
For those parts, indeed you can create small topics for them or if you consider them useless leave topic head elements or remove them completely.

Regards,
Radu