Key Features of DITA architecture

If you want an introduction to DITA, not Dita Von Tesse sadly, then IBM developerWorks is the place to go. The summary describes DITA as “The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. This architecture consists of a set of design principles for creating "information-typed" modules at a topic level and for using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product support portals on the Web.” The following extract is from its roadmap for DITA: what it is and how it applies to technical documentation.

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As the "Architecture" part of DITA’s name suggests, DITA has unifying features that serve to organize and integrate information:

Topic orientation. The highest standard structure in DITA is the topic. Any higher structure than a topic is usually part of the processing context for a topic, such as a print-organizing structure or the helpset-like navigation for a set of topics.
Reuse. A principal goal for DITA has been to reduce the practice of copying content from one place to another as a way of reusing content. Reuse within DITA occurs on two levels:
- Topic reuse. a topic can be reused in any topic-like context. Information designers know that when they reuse a topic in a new information model, the architecture will process it consistently in its new context.
- Content reuse. The SGML method of declaring reusable external entities is available for XML users, but this has several practical limitations in XML.
Specialization. The class mechanism in CSS indicates a common formatting semantic for any element that has a matching class value. In the same way, any DITA element can be extended into a new element whose identifier gets added to the class attribute through its DTD.
- Topic specialization. Applied to topic structures, specialization is a natural way to extend the generic topic into new information types (or infotypes), which in turn can be extended into more specific instantiations of information structures. For example, a recipe, a material safety data sheet, and an encyclopedia article are all potential derivations from a common reference topic.
- Domain specialization. Using the same specialization principle, the element vocabulary within a generic topic (or set of infotyped topics) can be extended by introducing elements that reflect a particular information domain served by those topics. For example, a keyword can be extended as a unit of weight in a recipe, as a part name in a hardware reference, or as a variable in a programming reference.
- Property-based processing. The DITA model provides metadata and attributes that can be used to associate or filter the content of DITA topics with applications such as content management systems, search engines, processing filters, and so on.
- Extensive metadata to make topics easier to find. The DITA model for metadata supports the standard categories for the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. In addition, the DITA metadata enables many different content management approaches to be applied to its content.
- Universal properties. Most elements in the topic DTD contain a set of universal attributes that enable the elements to be used as selectors, filters, content referencing infrastructure, and multi-language support. In addition, some elements, whose attributes can serve a range of specialized roles, have been analyzed to make sure that their enumerated values provide a rich basis for specialization (which usually constrains values and never adds to them).
- Taking advantage of existing tags and tools. DITA builds on well-accepted sets of tags and can be used with standard XML tools.
Leveraging popular language subsets. The core elements in DITA’s topic DTD borrow from HTML and XHTML, using familiar element names like p, ol, ul, and dl within an HTML-like topic structure. In fact, DITA topics can be written, like HTML for rendering directly in a browser.
Leveraging popular and well-supported tools. The XML processing model is widely supported by a number of vendors. The class-based extension mechanism in DITA translates well to the design features of the XSLT and CSS stylesheet languages defined by the World Wide Web Consortium and supported in many transformation tools, editors, and browsers. DITA topics can be processed by a spectrum of tools ranging from shareware to custom tailored products, on almost any operating platform.