Working with Reusable Components

In DITA, the content of almost any element can be made reusable simply by adding an @id attribute to the element. The DITA content reference mechanism can reuse any element with an ID. However, it is not considered best practice to arbitrarily reuse pieces of text from random topics due to the difficulties this creates in trying to manage it. It also creates the possibility of authors deleting or changing content that is reused in other topics without being aware that the content is reused.

To prevent these types of problems, you can create reusable components to manage a separate set of topics that contain topics designed specifically for reuse. Then, all of your reusable content can be referenced from the reusable components and if the content needs to be updated you only need to edit it in one place.

Oxygen XML Editor Eclipse plugin allows you to select content in a topic, create a reusable component from it and reference that component in other locations by using the Create Reusable Component and Insert Reusable Component actions.