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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.
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.
Bookmap elements
Elements in the bookmap section are used to organize DITA content into book form. They include elements for dividing up content, such as chapter and appendix, as well as metadata specific to publishing.
Bookmap metadata elements
The Bookmap specialization of ditamap supports standard book production for collections of DITA topics. This section contains the metadata elements used by bookmap to store book-related metadata.
<year>
The <year> element denotes a year.

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.
- 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.
  - Concept elements
    DITA concept topics answer "What is..." questions. Use the concept topic to introduce the background or overview information for tasks or reference topics. The concept topic restricts content following a section or example to other sections or examples. For more details on when to use concept and other information types, please refer to the DITA architectural specification.
  - Task elements
    Task topics answer "How do I?" questions, and have a well-defined structure that describes how to complete a procedure to accomplish a specific goal. Use the task topic to describe the steps of a particular task, or to provide an overview of a higher-level task. The task topic includes sections for describing the context, prerequisites, actual steps, expected results, example, and expected next steps for a task. For more details on when to use task and other information types, please refer to the DITA architectural specification.
  - Reference elements
    Reference topics describe factual material about a subject, such as the commands in a programming language. This format is also suitable for bibliographies, catalogues, the list of ingredients for recipes, and similar collections of structured descriptive prose. For more details on when to use reference and other information types, please refer to the DITA architectural specification.
  - Troubleshooting elements
    Troubleshooting topics document corrective action such as troubleshooting or alarm clearing.
  - Glossary elements
    Glossary elements include those elements designed to specify terms and their definitions, as well as elements that are designed to group, reference, or otherwise make use of information in the glossentry topic.
  - Bookmap elements
    Elements in the bookmap section are used to organize DITA content into book form. They include elements for dividing up content, such as chapter and appendix, as well as metadata specific to publishing.
    - Bookmap content elements
      The Bookmap specialization of ditamap supports standard book production for collections of DITA topics.
    - Bookmap metadata elements
      The Bookmap specialization of ditamap supports standard book production for collections of DITA topics. This section contains the metadata elements used by bookmap to store book-related metadata.
      - <bookmeta>
        The <bookmeta> element contains information about the book that is not considered book content, such as copyright information, author information, and any classifications.
      - <approved>
        The <approved> element contains information about when and by whom the book was approved during its publication history.
      - <bookchangehistory>
        The <bookchangehistory> element contains information about the history of the book's creation and publishing lifecycle, including who wrote, reviewed, edited, and tested the book. It also specifies when these events took place.
      - <bookevent>
        The <bookevent> element indicates a general event in the publication history of a book. This is an appropriate element for specialization if the current set of specific book event types does not meet your needs. If an element already exists to describe a specific type of event, such as <reviewed>, <edited>, or <approved>, use that element instead.
      - <bookeventtype>
        The <bookeventtype> element indicates the specific nature of a <bookevent>, such as updated, indexed, or deprecated. The required @name attribute indicates the event's type.
      - <bookid>
        The <bookid> element contains the publisher's identification information for the book, such as part number, edition number and ISBN number.
      - <booknumber>
        The <booknumber> element contains the book's form number, such as SC21-1920.
      - <bookowner>
        The <bookowner> element specifies the owner of the book's copyright.
      - <bookpartno>
        The <bookpartno> element contains the book's part number, such as 99F1234. A publisher might use a number like this one to identify a book for tracking purposes.
      - <bookrestriction>
        The <bookrestriction> element indicates whether the book is classified or restricted in some way. The @value attribute indicates any restrictions on the use of the material, such as declaring the information confidential or for licensed use only.
      - <bookrights>
        The <bookrights> element contains the information about the legal rights associated with the book, including copyright dates and owners.
      - <completed>
        The <completed> element indicates a completion date for some type of book event, such as a review, editing, or testing.
      - <copyrfirst>
        The <copyrfirst> element contains the copyright year, or the first copyright year within a multiyear copyright statement.
      - <copyrlast>
        The <copyrlast> element contains the last copyright year within a multiyear copyright statement.
      - <day>
        The <day> element denotes a day of the month.
      - <edited>
        The <edited> element contains information about when and by whom the book was edited during its publication history.
      - <edition>
        The <edition> element contains the edition number information, such as First Edition, or Third Edition, used by a publisher to identify a book.
      - <isbn>
        The <isbn> element contains the book's International Standard Book Number (ISBN).
      - <maintainer>
        The <maintainer> element contains information about who maintains the document; the maintainer might be an organization or a person.
      - <month>
        The <month> element denotes a month of the year.
      - <organization>
        The <organization> element contains the name of an organization. Note that unlike <organizationname>, the <organization> element is not restricted to use within <authorinformation>; it does not have to contain the name of an authoring organization.
      - <person>
        The <person> element contains information about the name of a person. Note that unlike the <personname> element, the <person> element is not restricted to describing the names of authors.
      - <printlocation>
        The <printlocation> element indicates the location where the book was printed. Customarily, the content is restricted to the name of the country.
      - <published>
        The <published> element contains information about the person or organization publishing the book, the dates when it was started and completed, and any special restrictions associated with it.
      - <publisherinformation>
        The <publisherinformation> contains information about what group or person published the book, where it was published, and certain details about its publication history. Other publication history information is found in the <bookchangehistory> element.
      - <publishtype>
        The <publishtype> element indicates whether the book is generally available from the publisher or is restricted in some way. The @value attribute indicates the restrictions, such as beta release, limited availability, or general availability.
      - <reviewed>
        The <reviewed> element contains information about when and by whom the book was reviewed during its publication history.
      - <revisionid>
        The <revisionid> element indicates the revision number or revision ID of the book. The processing implementation determines how the level is displayed. Common methods include using a dash, for example "-01", or a period, such as ".01".
      - <started>
        The <started> element indicates a start date for some type of book event, such as a review, editing, or testing.
      - <summary>
        The <summary> element contains a text summary associated with a book event (such as <approved> or <reviewed>) or with the list of copyrights for the book.
      - <tested>
        The <tested> element contains information about when and by whom the book was tested during its publication history.
      - <volume>
        The <volume> element contains the book's volume number, such as "2" to represent Volume 2.
      - <year>
        The <year> element denotes a year.
  - Technical-content domains elements
    Domains in this section include those generally associated with technical content, such as the programming and software domains.
- 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.

`<year>`

The <year> element denotes a year.

Content models

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

Inheritance

- topic/ph bookmap/year

Example

<bookchangehistory>
  <edited>
    <person>Joe T. Editor</person>
    <completed><year>2008</year><month>10</month><day>13</day></completed>
  </edited>
</bookchangehistory>

Attributes

The following attributes are available on this element: Universal attribute group, outputclass, and @keyref.