Home
Architectural specification: All-inclusive edition
The architectural specification portion of the DITA specification outlines the framework of DITA. It contains an overview of DITA markup; addressing; processing; configuration, specialization, generalization, and constraints; as well as information about coding DITA grammar files.
DITA markup
Topics and maps are the basic building blocks of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). Metadata attributes and values can be added to DITA topics and maps, as well as to elements within topics, to allow for conditional publishing and content reuse.
DITA maps
This topic collection contains information about DITA maps and the purposes that they serve. It also includes high-level information about DITA map elements, attributes, and metadata.
Examples of DITA maps
This section of the specification contains simple examples of DITA maps. The examples illustrate a few of the ways that DITA maps are used.
Example: How the @cascade attribute functions
The following example illustrates how the @cascade attribute can be used to fine tune how the values for the @platform attribute apply to topics referenced in a DITA map.

Specification URIs
Notices
Introduction to DITA 1.3
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) specification defines a set of document types for authoring and organizing topic-oriented information, as well as a set of mechanisms for combining, extending, and constraining document types.
Architectural specification: All-inclusive edition
The architectural specification portion of the DITA specification outlines the framework of DITA. It contains an overview of DITA markup; addressing; processing; configuration, specialization, generalization, and constraints; as well as information about coding DITA grammar files.
- Introduction to DITA
  The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. While DITA historically has been driven by the requirements of large-scale technical documentation authoring, management, and delivery, it is a standard that is applicable to any kind of publication or information that might be presented to readers, including interactive training and educational materials, standards, reports, business documents, trade books, travel and nature guides, and more.
- DITA markup
  Topics and maps are the basic building blocks of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). Metadata attributes and values can be added to DITA topics and maps, as well as to elements within topics, to allow for conditional publishing and content reuse.
  - DITA topics
    DITA topics are the basic units of DITA content and the basic units of reuse. Each topic contains a single subject. Topics might be of specific specialized information types, such as task, concept, or reference, or they might be generic, that is, without a specified information type.
  - DITA maps
    This topic collection contains information about DITA maps and the purposes that they serve. It also includes high-level information about DITA map elements, attributes, and metadata.
    - Definition of DITA maps
      DITA maps are documents that organize topics and other resources into structured collections of information. DITA maps specify hierarchy and the relationships among the topics; they also provide the contexts in which keys are defined and resolved. DITA maps SHOULD have .ditamap as the file extension.
    - Purpose of DITA maps
      DITA maps enable the scalable reuse of content across multiple contexts. They can be used by information architects, writers, and publishers to plan, develop, and deliver content.
    - DITA map elements
      A DITA map describes the relationships among a set of DITA topics. The DITA map and map-group domain elements organize topics into hierarchies, groups, and relationships; they also define keys.
    - DITA map attributes
      DITA maps have unique attributes that are designed to control the way that relationships are interpreted for different output purposes. In addition, DITA maps share many metadata and linking attributes with DITA topics.
    - Examples of DITA maps
      This section of the specification contains simple examples of DITA maps. The examples illustrate a few of the ways that DITA maps are used.
      - Example: DITA map that references a subordinate map
        This example illustrates how one map can reference a subordinate map using either <mapref> or the basic <topicref> element.
      - Example: DITA map with a simple relationship table
        This example illustrates how to interpret a basic three-column relationship table used to maintain links between concept, task, and reference material.
      - Example: How the @collection-type and @linking attributes determine links
        In this scenario, a simple map establishes basic hierarchical and relationship table links. The @collection-type and @linking attributes are then added to modify how links are generated.
      - Example: How the @cascade attribute functions
        The following example illustrates how the @cascade attribute can be used to fine tune how the values for the @platform attribute apply to topics referenced in a DITA map.
  - Subject scheme maps and their usage
    Subject scheme maps can be used to define controlled values and subject definitions. The controlled values can be bound to attributes, as well as element and attribute pairs. The subject definitions can contain metadata and provide links to more detailed information; they can be used to classify content and provide semantics that can be used in taxonomies and ontologies.
  - DITA metadata
    Metadata can be applied in both DITA topics and DITA maps. Metadata that is assigned in DITA topics can be supplemented or overridden by metadata that is assigned in a DITA map; this design facilitates the reuse of DITA topics in different DITA maps and use-specific contexts.
- DITA addressing
  DITA provides two addressing mechanisms. DITA addresses either are direct URI-based addresses, or they are indirect key-based addresses. Within DITA documents, individual elements are addressed by unique identifiers specified on the @id attribute. DITA defines two fragment-identifier syntaxes; one is the full fragment-identifier syntax, and the other is an abbreviated fragment-identifier syntax that can be used when addressing non-topic elements from within the same topic.
- DITA processing
  DITA processing is affected by a number of factors, including attributes that indicate the set of vocabulary and constraint modules on which a DITA document depends; navigation; linking; content reuse (using direct or indirect addressing); conditional processing; branch filtering; chunking; and more. In addition, translation of DITA content is expedited through the use of the @dir, @translate, and @xml:lang attributes, and the <index-sort-as> element.
- Configuration, specialization, generalization, and constraints
  The extension facilities of DITA allow existing vocabulary and constraint modules to be combined to create specific DITA document types. Vocabulary modules also can be specialized to meet requirements that are not satisfied by existing markup.
- Coding practices for DITA grammar files
  This section collects all of the rules for creating modular DTD, RELAX NG, or XML Schema grammar files to represent DITA document types, specializations, and constraints.
- Technical content specializations
  This section contains information about the technical content specializations. It includes a summary of the document types and domains, as well as information about how the technical content specializations support authoring troubleshooting information.
- Learning and training specializations
  The section contains information about the learning and training specializations: Challenges faced by developers of instructional content; use cases; objectives of the specializations; information about the reusable learning-objects approach to learning and training content; summary of the topic types and domains; and more.
Language reference: All-inclusive edition
The language reference portion of the DITA specification contains a topic for each DITA element. The topic defines the element, its inheritance hierarchy, and provides examples of usage. This portion of the DITA specification also includes information about DITA attributes.
Conformance
Conformance to the DITA specification allows documents and document types that are used with different processors or different versions of a processor to produce the same or similar results with little or no reimplementation or modification.
Acknowledgments
(Non-normative) Many members of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee participated in the creation of this specification and are gratefully acknowledged.
Non-normative information
This section contains non-normative information, including topics about new features in DITA 1.3 and migrating from DITA 1.2 to DITA 1.3.
Content models for learning and training package
For each element in the learning and training package, this section presents the content model and a list of parent elements that can contain that element.

Example: How the `@cascade` attribute functions

The following example illustrates how the @cascade attribute can be used to fine tune how the values for the @platform attribute apply to topics referenced in a DITA map.

Here a DITA map contains a collection of topics that apply to Windows, Linux, and Macintosh OS; it also contains a topic that is only applicable to users running the application on Linux.

<map product="PuffinTracker" platform="win linux mac" cascade="nomerge">
  <title>Puffin Tracking Software</title>
  <topicref href="intro.dita" navtitle="Introduction"/>
  <topicref href="setup.dita" navtitle="Setting up the product"/>
  <topicref href="linux-instructions.dita" navtitle="Linux instructions" platform="linux"/>
</map>

The values of the @platform attribute set at the map level cascade throughout the map and apply to the "Introduction" and "Setting up the product" topics. However, since the value of the @cascade attribute is set to "nomerge", the value of the @platform attribute for the "Linux instructions" topic does not merge with the values that cascade from above in the DITA map. The effective value of the @platform attribute for linux-instructions.dita is "linux".

The same results are produced by the following mark-up:

<map product="PuffinTracker" platform="win linux mac">
  <title>Puffin Tracking Software</title>
  <topicref href="intro.dita" navtitle="Introduction"/>
  <topicref href="setup.dita" navtitle="Setting up the product"/>
  <topicref href="linux-instructions.dita" navtitle="Linux instructions" platform="linux" cascade="nomerge"/>
</map>