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.
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.
Technical content: Document types
The Technical Content package contains various document types: concept, reference, general task, strict task, machinery task, troubleshooting, glossary entry, and glossary group. These document types are designed specifically for information that describes how to use products and processes. The Technical Content package also includes the map document type.
Glossary group topic
The glossary group (<glossgroup>) topic enables authors to include one or more glossary entry (<glossentry>) topics in a single collection file, rather than authoring each glossary entry topic in a separate file. The glossary group topic is a specialization of concept.

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 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.
  - Technical content: Document types
    The Technical Content package contains various document types: concept, reference, general task, strict task, machinery task, troubleshooting, glossary entry, and glossary group. These document types are designed specifically for information that describes how to use products and processes. The Technical Content package also includes the map document type.
    - Concept topic
      Concept topics are specialized from topic. They include the standard topic elements, including the short description, prolog, a body, and related links.
    - Reference topic
      Reference topics are specialized from topic. They contain the standard topic elements, including title, short descriptions or abstract, prolog, a body, and related links.
    - General task topic
      The general-task document type was introduced in DITA 1.2. It provides a less-strict content model for task-oriented information than was available previously. Some organizations might prefer the general-task content model over the strict task model, as it can facilitate the migration of legacy content that does not follow the strict-task topic model. The general-task document type serves as the base for the strict-task and machine-industry-task document types. It also can be used to create new document types or specializations.
    - Task topic (strict task)
      The strict task-document type supports the development of instructions for the completion of a procedure. The strict-task document type is built using the general-task information type combined with the strict taskbody constraint. See the reference below to ensure that you have the correct task document type when you update to DITA 1.3 from DITA 1.0 or DITA 1.1
    - Machinery Task topic
      The machinery task document type supports the development of instructions for the completion of a procedure. The machinery task document type is built using the general task information type combined with the Machinery Taskbody Constraint.
    - Troubleshooting topic
      The troubleshooting topic type provides markup for corrective action information such as troubleshooting and alarm clearing.
    - Glossary entry topic
      Each glossary entry <glossentry> topic defines a single sense of one term. Besides identifying the term and providing a definition, the topic accommodates basic terminology information, such as part of speech. A glossentry topic might also include acronyms and acronym expansions. Glossentry topics can be assembled by authors or processes to create glossaries for various purposes, including books, websites, or other projects.
    - Glossary group topic
      The glossary group (<glossgroup>) topic enables authors to include one or more glossary entry (<glossentry>) topics in a single collection file, rather than authoring each glossary entry topic in a separate file. The glossary group topic is a specialization of concept.
    - Bookmap
      The DITA bookmap specialization represents the key markup requirements for managing DITA content through book-oriented publication processes, including book metadata and book structures for organizing content.
  - Technical content domains
    This section contains information about the technical content domains, including a general overview and more specific information about the xNAL, release management, equation, and MathML domains.
  - Troubleshooting information
    Troubleshooting information is invaluable to technical content users because it provides advice to correct problems with task performance.
- 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.

Glossary group topic

The glossary group (<glossgroup>) topic enables authors to include one or more glossary entry (<glossentry>) topics in a single collection file, rather than authoring each glossary entry topic in a separate file. The glossary group topic is a specialization of concept.