DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture, is an XML-based system for creating content that can easily be re-purposed for multiple output formats, that is, PDF, web, mobile, etc. Quite a few companies are using it. Should yours be one of them? This series of blog posts will look at the pros and cons of DITA.

What Is DITA?

DITA can be described as a strongly-typed language for expressing technical content in a highly modular way. It is semantic in nature; its meta-data describes the nature and purpose of all content, rather that how that content is to appear. In this regard, DITA is somewhat similar to DocBook, and different from HTML and most Wiki or web markup languages.

DITA strongly encourages you to write small, modular “topics”, then create your content by linking topics together using “maps”. Numerous conditional-compilation and output-format-specific options are available.

NEXT: The “pros” of DITA