What is DITA?

DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is a standard methodology typically used by technical content experts to create, structure, and distribute content in a way that can be easily reused across multiple publications and platforms.

Content created using DITA is in XML format, making it machine-readable. DITA content is componentized, arranged in topics and maps, and most commonly stored in a component content management system (CCMS). This allows documents to be built piece by piece, using topics and maps to structure publications like building blocks.

What is DITA used for?

DITA is primarily used for creating and managing technical documentation in various industries. The topic-based structure of DITA allows technical writers to easily update specific sections of their documentation as features change or new versions are released.

In the manufacturing sector, DITA is used to create and maintain product manuals, assembly instructions, and maintenance guides. The ability to reuse content is particularly valuable when dealing with product lines that share many common components or features.

Healthcare organizations might use DITA for creating medical device documentation, clinical guidelines, or patient education materials. The structured nature of DITA helps ensure consistency and accuracy in these critical documents.

More industries start to adopt DITA due to the benefits it provides in terms of content quality and consistently, to better comply to regulatory pressures and reduce business risks.

Why is DITA useful?

DITA enhances content production efficiency by enabling reuse and reducing redundancy. It increases content scalability, allowing organizations to manage large volumes of information effectively. The structured approach avoids manual copy-and-pasting errors, improving accuracy. DITA increases the quality and flexibility of content, allowing for easy updates and adaptations. It enables synchronized content updates across all documentation, ensuring consistency. DITA provides more control over the document lifecycle, from creation to retirement. Finally, it can lower translation costs by allowing for the translation of individual components rather than entire documents.

DITA Maps

A DITA map allows componentized content to be ordered into a structured collection of topics and gives publications a purpose. 
 
You can think of a DITA map as a roadmap. 
 
When you use a roadmap you want to know where you’re going how you’ll get there. You also want to know why you’re going. The same applies to structured content – you want to know the why, where and how your content all fits together. 
 
It tells you (or more accurately, your CCMS) where topics fit into a publication by providing them with definitions. It tells you how to place these topics into a hierarchy so that navigation pathways can be constructed. And finally, it provides contextual information between topics, explaining how they are related so that links can be automatically created.
 
  • Order and hierarchy
  • Navigation
  • Links across different topics

DITA Topics

DITA topics are pieces of componentized content that can be written and understood as a single subject. 
 
Topics are the building blocks of DITA, and are organized into DITA maps.
 
Example use cases
  • Reuse content across multiple documents
  • Systematically build complex documentation