The Problem
Before DITA provided a standard architecture for modular technical content, Cisco’s switching documentation organization needed to know whether a custom structured-content model could support an authoring community of approximately 500 writers.
The question was operational, not theoretical. Writers and stakeholders needed working authoring and publishing behavior they could inspect before the organization committed to the model.
Why It Was Hard
A content model affects how writers create information, how the system validates it, and whether required outputs render correctly. The pilot also had to support HTML, WebHelp, and PDF, and account for right-to-left languages and complex scripts. A model that worked only in English or only in a schema editor would not answer the organizational question.
What I Figured Out
The architecture had to be evaluated as a working system. Prototypes, rendered output, writer interaction, and acceptance testing would expose problems that a DTD diagram could not.
What I Changed
I was one of three employees who co-designed the modular XML architecture and co-authored its custom DTD. I did not design it alone. My work concentrated heavily on rendering, publishing, and prototyping so the team could test the model through real behavior.
XSLT and XSL-FO transformed the XML into HTML, WebHelp, and PDF. XMetaL customization, CSS, JavaScript/JScript, VBScript, WebWorks, and related tooling connected the authoring environment to the publishing rules. Demonstrations, acceptance testing, bug triage, and writer support turned requirements into evidence the team could evaluate.
Formatter behavior was also part of the architecture. We evaluated Antenna House Formatter and Apache FOP against directionality, complex-script, and layout requirements rather than assuming all PDF engines were interchangeable.
What Changed as a Result
The pilot gave writers and stakeholders a working modular architecture they could inspect and test. It turned content-model and transformation decisions into observable system behavior for an organization of approximately 500 writers.
Evidence and Technical Detail
Custom DTD design, XML, XMetaL customization, XSLT, XSL-FO, CSS, JavaScript/JScript, VBScript, WebWorks, HTML, WebHelp, PDF, formatter evaluation, demonstrations, acceptance testing, and bug triage supported the evaluation.