Darwin Information Typing Architecture

Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an Extensible Markup Language (XML) framework for authoring, structuring, managing, and delivering content that is organized as stand-alone topics.

What can you accomplish with DITA?

  • Topic-based content. With DITA, you plan your content as a series of stand-alone topics, and you author that content with DITA-specific XML markup.
  • Structured, consistent content. Through XML, DITA promotes consistent content across all topics because the DITA framework determines the type and structure of content that can appear in each type of topic.
  • Configurable content. Readers can understand each topic without referring to any other topic, yet you can combine any number of topics to deliver comprehensive information on broader subject matter.
  • Reusable, customized content. You can reuse topics to assemble multiple deliverables that best suit their formats and audiences.

How do you begin working with DITA?

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) maintains DITA as an open standard. You can find many commercial and open-source tools that support DITA. Here are some examples:

How useful is DITA to you?

DITA is especially useful if you develop and manage content with these requirements:

  • consistent structure and style across multiple authors, teams, or departments
  • rapid, optimized delivery to multiple formats, platforms, and audiences

With DITA, each type of topic has a consistent structure that determines what and how content can appear in that type of topic—no matter who authors the topic. The topic structure guides authors toward consistency while they develop topic content.

Each topic is a stand-alone, complete unit of content, but you can combine any of these topics into deliverables for multiple formats, platforms, and audiences. You define each deliverable with a map. The map is an outline of references to the deliverable’s source topics. Each topic only exists in a single location. From that location, you can automatically reuse or update topic content across every deliverable that references that content.

Although DITA requires consistent XML markup, there are XML editing tools with user-friendly interfaces that can manage DITA structures for you.

What are the best features of DITA?

  • DITA is an established standard for structured information that you can easily implement.
  • DITA specialization allows you to customize structures to meet your audience and content needs.
  • DITA content automatically outputs to the formats required for your deliverables.
  • DITA content accommodates many current and future XML authoring, management, and delivery tools.
  • DITA improves productivity by promoting single-source content reuse across multiple deliverables.

Is DITA for you?

If you have multiple channels and audiences for your content, consider adopting DITA. Standard DITA topic types support technical documentation. Custom topic types can serve your needs for other forms of content. This flexibility can benefit your organization:

  • regardless of its industry
  • whether it is large or small
  • if it seeks to unify its voice across multiple authors
  • if it delivers related content across multiple formats and audiences

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