The DITA Help Subcommittee is discussing a proposal to create a new <help-context> element to hold metadata required for context-sensitive Help. The proposal would see the new element fit under the <topicmeta> element in the ditamap, and/or in the <prolog> element in the topic. The element would hold context numbers and/or context strings, and/or a reference to a window description. (There would need to be a separate element in the ditamap that would store the characteristics of a window named in the context-help element.)

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Last week at the WritersUA Conference in Portland, I chaired a "Developing Help with DITA" forum alongside Alan Houser, Matthew Ellison and Scott Prentice (all on the DITA Help Sub Committee). There was a lot of interest from delegates (the majority of whom are Help authors) in using DITA, although most are only 'testing the water'.

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Until a few weeks ago, I was unaware that there was a company employing some 200 technical writers just two kilometres from where I teach technical communication in Melbourne, Australia.  Likewise, a manager at the company was unaware that my university provided post-graduate education in technical communication. We were operating in two parallel universes. The company involved operates in the "engineering technical publications" field, which seems to be quite separate (and isolated) from the "IT and corporate technical communication" field.

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"Airplane Help" describes a technique whereby locally installed Help and server-based Help are integrated, so that a software application user is presented with server Help if he or she has an Internet connection, or local Help if not. The advantage of this approach is that the most current version of the Help is displayed if possible, but at least some form of Help is displayed when the user is "offline". Can DITA play a role in delivering Airplane Help?

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