Creating a topic

With DITA, topics are the basic building blocks for your content, and producing documentation starts with creating topics.

About this task

You create topics (as all objects) in the Repository. There are several ways to do it. We describe here how to do it directly from your XML editor.

DITA provides templates for your topics to help you make them adapted to specific purposes. The three main templates are Task, Concept and Reference. Task, for example, will contain and allow elements compatible with the description of a task. Using templates consistently and advisedly greatly improves the consistency of your documentation.

Procedure

  1. Open your favorite XML editor.
  2. From the top menu bar select SDL Tridion Docs > New.
  3. In the Topics tab, select a template. For example Task.
  4. Select Next.
    This opens the browse dialog, that lets you browse the Repository.
  5. In the Repository, locate the folder where you want to store your topic. It must be a folder that contains only topics.
  6. Select Next.
    This opens the Open Topic dialog, that lets you specify a list of properties for the topic.
  7. In the General tab, write the name of the topic in the Title field. Leave the other fields as they are.
  8. Select OK.
    This opens the topic you have created in your XML editor for editing. The topic already contains a few elements compatible with the template you have selected at the beginning. The title included in the topic is a copy of the one you have entered previously. You may change this title now, the name you have specified in the Open Topic dialog will remain unchanged as the (metadata) topic name.

Results

Your have created a new topic now located in the Repository folder of your choice. You can modify it now or check it in and edit it later. It is available for use in a map.