Ad-hoc brainstorming DITA with Oxygen
Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:17 pm
I run a one-person startup. I come up with the ideas and write both the code and the documentation. When writing, I jump from topic to topic. A few situations come up often that I don't know how to handle efficiently:
1) While writing, I introduce a word that will eventually need its own concept topic and related task topics. For example, in the concept "Initial Distributions", I wrote "Initial distributions quantify the chance of encountering a specific thing in a specific region prior to generation zero." Both "region" and "generation zero" need concept pages and task pages (e. g, "How to define generation zero" and "How to create a region"). I'd like to quickly stub out these files (just filename and title) and place them in the DITA map without leaving the current topic. Is that possible?
2) There should be links between related pages, either directly in the text or in a related links section at the top or bottom of the topic. If the link is directly in the text, should every instance of that word be a link in the entire document? What is the DITA standard for linking related pages?
3) Is there any way for Oxygen to automatically create links? For example, if I created a concept titled "Generation Zero" could that combination of words in other pages automatically become inline links to the concept page or trigger the addition of the appropriate link in the related pages header or footer?
4) I often want to leave myself programming and TODO notes. Is there a way to add and track such annotations without making them part of the DITA document? For example, could I highlight some text in a topic and attach a comment like "this should be its own function in the agents module" and then see a list of all such comments throughout the DITA map?
Thank you,
-d. vyd
1) While writing, I introduce a word that will eventually need its own concept topic and related task topics. For example, in the concept "Initial Distributions", I wrote "Initial distributions quantify the chance of encountering a specific thing in a specific region prior to generation zero." Both "region" and "generation zero" need concept pages and task pages (e. g, "How to define generation zero" and "How to create a region"). I'd like to quickly stub out these files (just filename and title) and place them in the DITA map without leaving the current topic. Is that possible?
2) There should be links between related pages, either directly in the text or in a related links section at the top or bottom of the topic. If the link is directly in the text, should every instance of that word be a link in the entire document? What is the DITA standard for linking related pages?
3) Is there any way for Oxygen to automatically create links? For example, if I created a concept titled "Generation Zero" could that combination of words in other pages automatically become inline links to the concept page or trigger the addition of the appropriate link in the related pages header or footer?
4) I often want to leave myself programming and TODO notes. Is there a way to add and track such annotations without making them part of the DITA document? For example, could I highlight some text in a topic and attach a comment like "this should be its own function in the agents module" and then see a list of all such comments throughout the DITA map?
Thank you,
-d. vyd