DITA processing

Several common DITA processing behaviors are driven by attributes, including setting the set of vocabulary and constraint modules on which a DITA document depends, navigation, linking, content reuse (via direct or indirect addressing), conditional processing, chunking, and printing. In addition, translation of DITA content is expedited through the use of the @dir, @translate, and @xml:lang attributes, and the <index-sort-as> element.

  1. Module compatibility and the @domains attribute
    A given DITA document declares, through the @domains attribute on <map> and <topic> elements, the set of vocabulary and constraint modules on which it depends.
  2. Navigation behaviors
    DITA includes markup that processors may use to generate reader navigation to or across DITA topics.
  3. DITA linking
    DITA depends heavily on links. The purposes for which it provides links include defining the content and organization of publication structures (DITA maps), topic-to-topic navigation links and cross references, and reuse of content by reference. All DITA links use the same addressing facilities, either URI-based addresses or DITA-specific indirect addresses using keys and key references.
  4. DITA addressing
    DITA provides a number of facilities for establishing relationships among DITA elements and between DITA elements and non-DITA resources. All DITA relationships use the same addressing facilities irrespective of the semantics of the relationship established. DITA addresses are either direct, URI-based addresses, or indirect key-based addresses. Within DITA documents, individual elements are addressed by unique IDs specified on the common @id attribute. DITA defines two fragment identifier syntaxes for addressing DITA elements, one for topics and elements within maps and one for non-topic elements within topics.
  5. Content inclusion (conref)
    The DITA @conref, @conkeyref, @conrefend, and related attributes provide a mechanism for reuse of content fragments within DITA topics or maps.
  6. Conditional processing (profiling)
    Attribute-based profiling, also known as conditional processing or applicability, is the use of classifying metadata that enables the filtering, flagging, searching, indexing, and other processing based on the association of an element with one or more values in a specific classification domain.
  7. Chunking
    Content may be chunked (divided or merged into new output documents) in different ways for the purposes of authoring, for delivering content, and for navigation. For example, something best authored as a set of separate topics may need to be delivered as a single Web page. A map author can use the chunk attribute to split up multi-topic documents into component topics or combine multiple topics into a single document as part of output processing.
  8. Printing
    By default, the content of most elements is included in all output media. The DITA map provides a means to suppress element content from appearing in print-oriented media, or from appearing in non-print-oriented media, such as HTML. The generation or non-generation of print and other forms of output can also be affected through the use of other navigation-related attributes.
  9. Translation and localization
    DITA has features that facilitate preparing content for translation and working with multilingual content, including the @xml:lang attribute, the @dir attribute, and the @translate attribute. In addition, the <index-sort-as> element provides support for index sorting in languages in which the index sort order must be modified by the author or translator.