Home
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.
Map elements
Map elements include the core components of DITA maps, such as <topicref> and <reltable>, as well as general purpose map specializations in the map group domain.
Map group elements
The map group domain elements define, group, or reference content. Many of the map group elements are convenience elements, which means that they simply make it easier for an author to make use of existing functions.
<topicgroup>
The <topicgroup> element groups <topicref> elements for common treatment without affecting the structural hierarchy of the map, as opposed to nesting <topicref> elements, which does imply a structural hierarchy. The <topicgroup> element can provide linking relationships and shared, inherited attributes to the set of elements that it contains without affecting the resulting table of contents or navigation.

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.
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.
- Element quick reference
  This section contains a listing of DITA elements.
- Topic elements
  The base topic elements include elements that make up the core building blocks of the DITA topic, such as topic, body, and related-links, as well as elements like <p> and <ph> that are used in many topic specializations. Some of these elements are also available inside the <topicmeta> map element.
- Map elements
  Map elements include the core components of DITA maps, such as <topicref> and <reltable>, as well as general purpose map specializations in the map group domain.
  - Basic map elements
    DITA maps are built from a few core elements that are used for referencing and organizing topics. The <topicmeta> element is also available to specify metadata for the map, for individual topics, or for groups of topics. Many elements inside <topicmeta> are also available inside the topic prolog.
  - Map group elements
    The map group domain elements define, group, or reference content. Many of the map group elements are convenience elements, which means that they simply make it easier for an author to make use of existing functions.
    - <anchorref>
      The <anchorref> element is used to reference an <anchor> element in a map. The contents of an <anchorref> element are rendered both in the original authored location and at the location of the referenced <anchor> element. The referenced <anchor> element might be defined in the current map or another map. When possible, this integration is done when displaying the map with <anchor> to an end user.
    - <keydef>
      The <keydef> element is a convenience element that is used to define keys without any of the other effects that occur when using a <topicref> element: no content is included in output, no title is included in the table of contents, and no linking or other relationships are defined. The <keydef> element is not the only way to define keys; its purpose is to simplify the process by defaulting several attributes to achieve the described behaviors.
    - <mapref>
      The <mapref> element is a convenience element that is equivalent to a <topicref> element with the @format attribute set to "ditamap". The hierarchy of the referenced map is merged into the container map at the position of the reference, and the relationship tables of the child map are added to the parent map.
    - <topicgroup>
      The <topicgroup> element groups <topicref> elements for common treatment without affecting the structural hierarchy of the map, as opposed to nesting <topicref> elements, which does imply a structural hierarchy. The <topicgroup> element can provide linking relationships and shared, inherited attributes to the set of elements that it contains without affecting the resulting table of contents or navigation.
    - <topichead>
      The <topichead> element provides a title-only entry in a navigation map, which should appear as a heading when the map is rendered as a table of contents. In print contexts it should also appear as a heading in the rendered content.
    - <topicset>
      The <topicset> element defines a complete unit of content that can be reused in other DITA maps or other <topicset> elements. Unlike the base <topicref> element, the <topicset> is explicitly intended to define a set of topics that are often or always used as a unit; it can be especially useful for task composition in which larger tasks are composed of smaller tasks. The @id attribute on a <topicset> is required, which ensures that the complete unit is available for reuse in other contexts.
    - <topicsetref>
      The <topicsetref> element references a <topicset> element. The referenced <topicset> element can be defined in the current map or in another map.
- Metadata elements
  Metadata elements include information that is located within the <topicmeta> element (in maps) or <prolog> element (in topics), as well as indexing elements that can be placed in additional locations within topic content.
- Domain elements
  General purpose domains are not specific to any type of information, such as the hazard statement domain that provides elements for describing hazardous situations.
- Classification elements
  Classification elements support managing metadata. Those in the subject scheme map are used to define controlled values and to bind the controlled values to DITA attributes as enumerations. Those declared in the classification domain are used in other maps to classify content according to the scheme.
- Specialization elements
  Several DITA elements exist either for architectural reasons or for support of specialized markup yet to be designed. Although there is little need to use these elements unless you are directed to, some of them, such as <state>, can be used if your content makes use of these semantic distinctions. For example, a discussion of signals on a gate of an integrated logic circuit might use the <state> element to represent either on or off conditions of that gate.
- Legacy conversion elements
  Conversion elements exist primarily to aid in the conversion of content to DITA.
- DITAVAL elements
  A conditional processing profile (DITAVAL file) is used to identify which values are to be used for conditional processing during a particular output, build, or some other purpose. The profile should have an extension of .ditaval.
- Technical content elements
  Elements in the technical content section include the original Concept, Task, and Reference specializations, as well as specializations added in later releases. It also includes domains designed primarily for technical content.
- Learning and training elements
  Elements in the learning and training section include specialized topics, maps, content, and metadata elements specially designed to support instructional content.
- Attributes
  This section collects commonly used attributes, with common definitions. If an element uses a different definition, or narrows the scope of, an otherwise common attribute, it will be called out in the topic that defines the element.
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.

`<topicgroup>`

The <topicgroup> element groups <topicref> elements for common treatment without affecting the structural hierarchy of the map, as opposed to nesting <topicref> elements, which does imply a structural hierarchy. The <topicgroup> element can provide linking relationships and shared, inherited attributes to the set of elements that it contains without affecting the resulting table of contents or navigation.

Beginning with DITA 1.2, you are able to specify a <navtitle> element within the <topicmeta> element inside of a <topicgroup>. The <topicgroup> element is meant as a non-titled grouping element, so adding a <navtitle> element to the <topicgroup> element has no defined purpose, and processors MUST ignore the title. Processors MAY issue a message when ignoring the title.

Content models

See appendix for information about this element in OASIS document type shells.

Inheritance

+ map/topicref mapgroup-d/topicgroup

Example

Each <topicref> element in the following example inherits the @audience and @linking attributes. In this way the common attributes are set for the entire group of <topicref> elements without affecting the navigation hierarchy.

<topicgroup audience="novice" linking="none">
  <topicref href="this.dita"/>
  <topicref href="that.dita"/>
  <topicref href="theother.dita"/>
</topicgroup>

Attributes

The following attributes are available on this element: Universal attribute group, Attributes common to many map elements, and outputclass. Although @locktitle is available as part of Attributes common to many map elements, it has no defined purpose for this element.

The @scope, @format, and @type attributes from Link relationship attribute group are also available.