DITA philosophy
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML standard used for creating, producing, and delivering technical documentation. DITA provides a topic-oriented approach to writing technical documentation. Two main tenets of DITA include minimalist writing and content reuse.
Topics in DITA and Minimalist Writing
There are four different types of information types in DITA, a generic topic plus three main specializations of that topic:
- generic topic
- Task topic
- Concept topic
- Reference topic
Task, concept, and reference topics each have specific elements and a required element structure. For example, the task topic has a very well-defined structure and describes one procedure with step-by-step instructions. This well-defined structure is an example of semantic tagging. Semantic tagging is a fundamental approach to creating content suitable to produce deliverables in a wide variety of formats- from print to portable devices.
The general idea is to organize your information so that a (Task topic type) is supported by background information (Concept topic type) and look-up information (Reference topic type).
The map is used to organize topics in a publication, much like a Table of Contents in a printed book.
Minimalist writing is enforced by DITA schemas—users want only the minimal, relevant information in a task topic, and no more.
How much DITA do you need?
Content Editor is your topic editor and it supports the DITA standard version 1.2. Content Editor is designed to allow you to concentrate on creating and editing the content. You can get started editing XML topics even with minimal knowledge of the DITA standard or the underlying XML structure and tags. Content Editor provides editing options based on your current context or focus. Content Editor enables you to easily reuse content from your Content Manager repository.