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New Geek Project

I was considering a new project at work, but couldn' t seem to get funding, so I'll try it at home, and perhaps blog about it (in addition to my rants).  

It strikes me that creating XML documentation in a topic based architecture is almost exactly like a software development project:  You have source files that you need to control (XML source instead of code source), you have binaries to link in (images instead of libraries), and you must run the source through a process (stylesheet instead of compiler) to create your executable file(s).  In this case, it's a document or web instead of an actual program file.  Since I'm not creating something for work, I'll make something I like better.  Something for one of my geekier hobbies...  Yes, I'm one of those freaky Dungeons and Dragons players.  Since I'm running a campaign, maybe I'll try to create a world encyclopedia or adventure notes using this project.

So, let's start at the beginning.  Source.
  I'm going to use Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) as my XML source.  This is a free OASIS spec that will do nicely.  I won't need to specialize the DTDs or schema at all, since most of my files will be of type "Topic" or "Concept".  I don't think it will matter much which I use, but I can figure that out later.  DITA has a nice (and free) toolkit on sourceforge called the DITA open toolkit, or DITA-OT.

As for source control, Subversion is free and seems to be pretty popular.  I know there are others, but I don't really have any requirements for my source control, so SVN should be fine.  Besides, the documentation is pretty easily available.

So my next task is to get the DITA open toolkit and Subersion up and running.  More on that coming soon.
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