An introduction to DITA

DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new topic types and describing new information domains based on existing types and domains.

The process for creating new topic types and domains is called specialization. Specialization allows the creation of very specific, targeted document type definitions while still sharing common output transforms and design rules developed for more general types and domains, in much the same way that classes in an object-oriented system can inherit methods of ancestor classes.

DITA topics are XML conforming. As such, they are readily viewed, edited, and validated with standard XML tools, although some features such as content referencing and specialization may benefit from customized support.

Definitions and background concepts
The following terms have specific meanings in DITA which should be understood before reading either the DITA markup specification or the DITA specialization specification.
Naming conventions and file extensions
The following naming conventions and file extensions are in use by DITA.
DTD organization
The OASIS DITA document types are implemented with a set of DTD modules. Some of these modules are used by every DITA document type; others are only used by topics or by maps, and some are only used in specific specializations.Each standard DTD has a public identifier that can be used to reference either the latest version or a specific version of the DTD.
XML Schema organization
The OASIS DITA document types are implemented with a set of schema modules. Some of these modules are used by every DITA schema document; others are only used by topics or by maps, and some are only used in specific specializations.An XML resolver needs to be able to uniquely identify an XML Schema in order to map to a local resource.

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