DITA
Overview
DITA is a content management system, which is essentially the managing or organizing of content. Content can include written text, illustrations or images, among other forms of communication that can be digitally published. DITA can be an important tool to technical communicator's as it allows the writer to not only organize their content, but to also publish, and easily reuse or refer back to content.
DITA stands for Darwin Information Typing Architecture. DITA is built on XML technologies [7] meaning it follows the same basic properties. This basis is in the use of elements or tags (containers that hold text) which provide structure and organization to the content [9]. DITA is an open OASIS Standard [4], which means it is available to the general public and can continue to be changed or altered. An open standard is a process, rather than a definitive, finished product, and must be maintained. The OASIS Technical Committee updates and maintains DITA standards.
As an architectural approach [7], the building or maintaining of, DITA allows for the designing, authoring, publishing, and managing of content [4]. "Darwin" refers to scientist Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. This is to emphasize DITA's fundamentals of specialization, adaption, and inheritance (7). These fundamentals are expressed through DITA maps, DITA relationship tables, DITA specialization, and DITA metadata attributes and XML element names [4].
Having a basic understanding of DITA provides technical writers a method of managing and reusing content to ultimately save time and money. DITA also allows technical writers to alter the formats of their content with ease.
Uses of DITA
The uses of DITA include the designing, authoring, publishing, and managing of content [4].
Content Reuse
Content reuse of DITA is an important tool for technical writers in saving time and money. It allows quick reuse of information across multiple platforms or deliverables [4].
Design Reuse
Due to DITA specialization, design reuse comes at ease for technical writers. Specialization allows for the describing of content, both generic and specific, and fixes or enhancements are automatic by specialized information types [1].
Process Reuse
DITA saves technical writers time in reusing processes. Process reuse can be built through references to create automatic changes throughout the content, rather than having to make individual, time-consuming changes [1].
Localization and Translation
DITA is also praised for reducing costs of localization and translation services. This is because of specialized features in DITA, such as the @xml.lang attribute, @dir attribute, and @translate attribute [7].
Creating Content in DITA
DITA uses a structure that is based on generic topic types that can be used to describe most content. This structure is divided into three topic types: concept, task, and reference [2]. Authoring in topics organizes content and provides technical writers a way to create specific modules of information that can stand alone for users [4]. easyDITA is an easy to use DITA authoring and publishing tool.
Figure 1: A look inside the authoring tool easyDITA.
Topics
DITA uses topic-based authoring to divide, structure, and organize information. The three topic types concept, task, and reference topics each perform functions intended to guide the reader or user [4].
Concept Topics
Concept topics answer the question of what the topic is, and provides an overview. The concept will directly support the task topic. A concept generally consists of a title, and one or more paragraphs [4].
Figure 2: A look inside a concept topic in easyDITA. A concept typically contains the title of the concept, a short description of the concept, and a paragraph explaining "what is" the concept.
Task Topics
Figure 4: A look inside a reference topic. This is a glossary of terms that have been referenced throughout the text or content. A reference topic typically contains a title and a list of definitions.
Maps
DITA maps are a way of organizing and structuring topics. By structuring topics, a hierarchy, or the relationships between topics, is specified. DITA maps are designed to publish large amounts of content or topics with ease [5].
Task topics answer the question of how to perform a task. The body of a task topic generally contains steps and substeps [4].
Figure 3: A look inside a task topic. A task topic typically contains a title of the task, a short description of the task, the context of the task, a numbered or bulleted list of steps, and lastly the result of the task.
Reference Topics
Reference topics allow technical writers to provide facts and information for concept or task topics. Reference topics are generally organized in tables or lists, and refer to concept or task topics [4].
Figure 5: A look inside a DITA map. This is the structuring and organization of content (topics), and are in what order you would like them to appear in a published format.
Publishing Content in DITA
Because of DITA's specializations, such as dividing information into topics and maps, which is an organization of the topics, publication is made flexible [4]. Content in DITA can be published into a variety of formats, such as HTML, XHTML, and PDF [6]. Tools such as DITA Open Toolkit and easyDITA is a set of open source tools which process DITA maps or individual topics into a variety of formats.
History of DITA
DITA was designed by technical writers for technical writers [7]. In 2004, the DITA specification was donated by IBM to OASIS. The three main information topics concept, task, and reference, still remain at DITA's core [3].
The architects of IBM DITA were Don Day, Michael Priestley, and Dave Schell. Version 1.0 of DITA was approved by OASIS in Apr 2005, version 1.1 in Aug 2007, and version 1.2 in 2010 [7].
References
1. Priestley, Michael, Hargis, Gretchen, & Carpenter, Susan. (2001). DITA: An XML-Based Technical Documentation Authoring and Publishing Architecture. Technical Communication, 48(3), 352–367.
2. Evia, C. (2017). Authoring Standards-Based Intelligent Content the Easy Way with Lightweight DITA. 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1145/3121113.3121204
3. Evia, Carlos, Sharp, Matthew R, & Perez-Quinones, Manuel A. (2015). Teaching Structured Authoring and DITA Through Rhetorical and Computational Thinking. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 58(3), 328–343. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPC.2016.2516639
4. Hackos, J. (2011). Introduction to DITA Second Edition: A User Guide to the Dawin Information Typing Architecture Including DITA 1.2. Comtech Services, pgs (____)
5. Eberlein, Kristen, & Harrison, Nancy. (2017). OASIS Dawin Information Typing Architecture. OASIS.
6. (2006). Publishing with the DITA Open Toolkit. DITA.XML.org.
7. Self, Tony. Introduction to DITA. The DITA Style Guide.
8. DITA Primer. easyDITA.
9. Roche, Eileen. (2000). Explaining XML. Harvard Business Review.
Last updated by Samantha Dahl 20 October 2020