DITA Quick Facts

  • Stands for Darwin Information Typing Architecture
  • Topic-based XML framework for authoring and publishing technical documentation
  • Developed by IBM in the early 2000s to improve content reuse practices
  • A basic unit of content is topic, which is a portion of content that provides information on a single subject
  • Topics reside in a repository (for example, in a special folder on your hard drive)
  • To compile specific deliverables, topics are arranged to DITA maps that define the contents and hierarchy of a document
  • Multiple deliverables with customized content can be generated from the same set of topics
  • Topics provide different types of information:
  • Concept topics describe background information
  • Task topics describe procedures
  • Reference topics describe API commands
  • Each information type has its own structure
  • The structure of information types can be customized to specific needs of your company
  • XML editors are used to author DITA and arrange topics into deliverables
  • DITA Open Toolkit is used to produce deliverables from DITA, such as PDFs, online help, Java Help, and Eclipse Help