Structured authoring
DITA topics, maps, XML source, information typing, controlled relationships, and publication-oriented content organization.
Technical Writing · Structured Authoring · DITA
CivicGrid 500 Documentation System
A DITA-based technical documentation prototype for a fictional industrial energy system.
The product is fictional. The documentation architecture, structured source, reusable content model, publishing workflow, and WebHelp outputs are the work sample.
Publication
Operator Documentation
Audience-filtered WebHelp publication focused on system operation, monitoring, and operator response.
Open Operator Documentation →Publication
Installer Documentation
Audience-filtered WebHelp publication demonstrating role-specific content delivery from the same source.
Open Installer Documentation →What this demonstrates
Documentation as a system
The project treats documentation as an information system rather than a collection of standalone documents. Content is modeled, structured, reused, filtered, and assembled into audience-specific publications.
Reusable content
Canonical component definitions using
conref and conkeyref,
plus DITA keys and key references for controlled
terminology.
Audience-specific publishing
A shared DITA source produces separate Operator and Installer publications through profiling and conditional processing.
Publication engineering
Custom Oxygen WebHelp Responsive templates, XHTML fragments, CSS customization, responsive presentation, and cross-publication navigation.
Documentation architecture
System decomposition, information requirements, audience and task analysis, reusable information modeling, and documentation gap identification.
Delivery model
One structured source can support multiple publications without duplicating the underlying content.
System model
CivicGrid 500 architecture
The documentation set begins with a system-level model separating the physical power system from the control and information system.
Documentation workflow
From system understanding to published content
01
Orient
Establish system purpose, architecture, boundaries, terminology, and operating context.
02
Model
Decompose the system and identify actors, tasks, functions, and information requirements.
03
Structure
Map information requirements to DITA topics, reusable content, maps, and publication structures.
04
Publish
Apply profiling and publication templates to produce audience-specific WebHelp outputs.
Technical notes
This prototype was authored in Oxygen XML Editor using DITA and published as customized WebHelp Responsive output. The documentation source remains separate from the publication presentation layer.
The system is intentionally conceptual and does not represent an engineered or production-deployed energy system. Product and component behavior shown here is part of the fictional CivicGrid documentation model.