The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an OASIS open standard for Extensible Markup Language (XML) that is used to create, structure, and distribute content.

Information typing is the process of identifying and categorizing different kinds of information, typically conceptual, task-oriented, or reference information. These different types of information each go in dedicated topic types that correspond to the information types.

A DITA specialization is the process of creating a specialized, or custom, DITA element, topic, or attribute, using an existing DITA element as the base model for specialization. This enables you to customize DITA elements to align with your content model or needs.

OASIS publishes the DITA Specification for all versions of DITA. You can find the current DITA specification under the following link: DITA Version 1.3 Specification.

Maps enable you to create deliverables by adding references to topics or other maps. Think of a map as a book binder and topics as pages. You have a binder (map) and you fill it with pages (topics). You can also nest maps within other maps to create larger publications.

Bookmaps

Bookmaps are typically used when content needs to be printed on paper. They contain elements that are unique to bookmaps, like the frontmatter element, backmatter element, or chapter element. The structure of a bookmap represents the structure of a printed book. Bookmap also comes with a rich set of metadata that can hold information about the book, such as its authors and owners, versions, and production history. For more information, see bookmap (DITA 1.3 Standard).

Learning Maps

Learning maps are dedicated for instructional content that you can author in Heretto CCMS just like your technical content. For example, you can create a training course in Heretto CCMS and then upload it to a Moodle platform. You can also reuse your technical content in your instructional content to leverage topic and element reuse. For more information, see Learning and training: map types (DITA 1.3 Standard).

Sitemaps

Sitemaps are specialized DITA maps that live in Heretto CCMS. They can contain other sitemaps, maps, bookmaps, topics, and other files. A sitemap enables you to publish to Heretto Portal. For more information, see Heretto Portal at a Glance.

Maps

Maps are generally used for web outputs such as online helps or webhelps. They are also useful to structure content into reusable blocks of content. For example, a part of a document that needs to be reused in other documents can be organized in a map, which can then be easily reused in other maps. For more information, see map (DITA 1.3 Standard).

You can reuse your DITA content using different mechanisms. You can reuse topics using topic references, or topicrefs. You can reuse maps using map references, or maprefs. You can reuse smaller bits of content at the element level using content references, or conrefs. You can insert variable content into your topics using content key references, or conkeyrefs. You can also profile content for different audiences using filtering attributes.

We recommend referring to LearningDITA.com, which offers free courses to learn DITA at your own pace.

You can insert links to other pieces of content using either direct or indirect linking mechanisms. To insert a direct link, you can use cross references, or xrefs. You can use these to link to other topics, external resources, or pieces of content within a topic. To insert an indirect link, you can use key references, or keyrefs. Key references link to a key instead of linking to the content directly, so you can modify the link for different maps by changing key definitions.