In May 2013, Bluestream CTO Jim Tivy presented terminology as something that should help both the person writing a topic and the person trying to find an answer.
The announced session
Bluestream announced “How to squeeze the maximum value from your terminology” for Monday, May 20, 2013, as part of the Silicon Valley DITA Interest Group (SVDIG) meeting series. Jim Tivy planned to explore how DITA and DITA-enabled tools could make terminology more useful to authors and readers.
The session description placed consistent use of important terms at the center of clear communication. It also argued that terminology should be accessible in the tools people actually use: the authoring environment, repository search and the online Knowledge Base.
In discourse, not all words are created equal: certain words are central to understanding a subject and other words are not. The organization and consistent use of these important terms, the terminology, is essential to clear communication. Fundamentally, planned and controlled terminology is used by authors in writing and editing, and it is further used by readers searching in glossaries and indexes. Writing tools must make the tasks of authors easy. For example, current DITA writing tools must provide access to terminology lists. Furthermore, search and browse systems in a CMS or online Knowledgebase must incorporate terminology to make content quickly findable and understandable for authors and readers.
Original webinar description · May 2013
Editorial context · October 2026
Follow a term through the content journey
A useful test is to choose one term that readers regularly misunderstand or search for in different ways. Follow it from authoring to publication. Does the writer know the approved name? Does the term point to a meaningful definition? Can a reader find the relevant topic using the language they know?
At authoring time
Check who approves the term, where its definition lives and how an author learns that a preferred term has changed.
At discovery time
Check the relationship between the words in a topic, the terms in a glossary and the language readers use to search.
The DITA 1.2 specification includes an example of using keys to connect terms with glossary entries. It provides a concrete standards-era reference for one of the ideas behind the session. Read the OASIS key examples.
The historical announcement linked to SVDIG registration. It does not establish the availability of a recording today.
Company information and contacts from the original announcement
Archived wording. Company descriptions, roles, addresses and contact details below are preserved as part of the historical record and may have changed.
About Bluestream
Bluestream’s flagship product, the XDocs Component Content Management System (CCMS), enables organizations of all sizes to realize the benefits of DITA at a lower cost than the competition, with comparable or better quality, and thus offers unparalleled value. Bluestream has been in business since 1997 and has customers in many verticals, among them software, oil and gas, health care, military, manufacturing, and finance.
Bluestream Media Contact
Nenad Furtula, VP Sales and Marketing
Bluestream Database Software Corp.
Tel: +34 634 571 862
nenadf@bluestream.com
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