Overview of DITA 1.3

© 2015 Eberlein Consulting, LLC
Overview of DITA 1.3
Kristen James Eberlein
Eberlein Consulting LLC
IXIASOFT User Conference 2015
Montreal, Canada

Agenda
1. What is OASIS? The DITA TC?
2. My background
3. Who are you?
4. DITA 1.3 for authors
5. DITA 1.3 for architects
6. Question and answers

What is OASIS?
 OASIS = Organization for the Advancement of
Structured Information Standards
 A nonprofit consortium that drives the development,
convergence and adoption of open standards for the
global information society

What is the OASIS DITA Technical Committee?
 A group of 16 people who
meet on a telephone call
each week for 60 minutes.
 All volunteer, no paid staff
 Tools poor: No CCMs, we
use SVN …
 We rely on the “kindness of
vendors”
 We (or our corporate
employers) pay so that we
can participate in
developing DITA.

Who am I?
 Involved with DITA TC since 2008; currently chair
 Co-editor of the DITA 1.2 and 1.3 specifications
 Background as a information architect and information developer
 Trained as a historian
 Available for consulting :)

Who are you?
Role Responsibilities
DITA author Develops information in DITA
DITA information architect Develops maps, content
models, reuse strategies, and
taxonomies
DITA practitioner Develops document-type
shells, specializations, and
constraints
DITA developer • Develops transformations
• Develops processors and
applications

DITA 1.3 for authors
1. Troubleshooting
2. Context-sensitive help
3. Table enhancements
4. New domains
– MathML and SVG
– Release management
– XML mention
5. New highlighting elements
6. New deliveryTarget attribute
7. Addressing same-topic elements
8. Learning and training
9. New <sort-as> element
10. Miscellaneous fixes
DITA 1.3 for architects
and practitioners
1. Scoped keys
2. Cross-deliverable linking
3. Branch filtering
4. RELAX NG
5. Cascade attribute
6. Grouped filtering attributes
7. <div> element
7

DITA for authors …

Troubleshooting
 New type of <note>: Trouble
 New element in <step>: <steptroubleshooting>
 New section in <task>: <tasktroubleshooting>
 New document type: <troubleshooting>
Champion: DITA Technical Communication subcommittee, with
special thanks to Bob Thomas, Tagsmiths

Context-sensitive help
 Better support for requirements of
online help systems
 Enables:
– Embedding context-hook information in
DITA topic and maps
– Specifying windowing metadata in a DITA
map
– Delivering online help without using an
additional Help Authoring Tool (HAT)
Champion: DITA Help subcommittee, with special thanks to Tony Self
and Stan Doherty

Changes to tables
 Control over orientation (tables) and rotation of text
(table cells)
 New attributes (@scope and @headers) for <entry>
 Enables:
– Better control over formatting for print-based output formats
– Improves accessibility for very complex tables that cannot
be simplified
Champions: Chris Nitchie (Oberon Technologies), Scott Hudson (Comtech)

New domains (1 of 2)
 SVG
– Enables use of SVG markup within DITA documents, as well
as use-by-reference of SVG markup stored in other files
 Equation and MathML
– Support for numbered, in-line, and block equations
– Enables use of MathML markup within DITA documents, as
well as use-by-reference of MathML markup stored in other
files
Champion: Eliot Kimber, Individual
member (Contrext)

New domains (2 of 2)
XML mention
– Describe and document XML
applications and document
types
 Used in DITA 1.3 spec
Release management
 Enables content authors to log
comments and metadata when
content is changed
 Available in both maps and
topics
 Makes generated release notes
a possibility!
13
Champions: Eliot Kimber, Individual member (Contrext) and the DITA
TechComm subcommittee, with special thanks to Tom Cihak, Freescale

 <line-through>
– Enable authors to indicate a deletion or revision for
rhetorical purpose
 <overline>
– Indicates content that should be rendered with a line
above it
New highlighting elements
14
Champion: Eliot Kimber, Individual member (Contrext)

@deliveryTarget attribute
 A new conditional processing attribute to replace the
now-deprecated @print. Available both in topics and
maps.
 Enables:
– More finely controlled filtering for output formats
– Values are controlled by implementation; infinite
possibilities.

 Link to an ID in the same topic more easily.
 For example, link to a figure in the SAME topic by
placing a period after the hash tag
(<xref=“#./figure1”>
Addressing same-topic elements
16
Champion: David Helfinstine, PTC

Changes to learning and training
 New document types
 New domains for learning interactions
 Enables:
– Learning groups and learning objects to be stored as
objects in a repository
– Enables block-level content in question-and-answer
interactions – a serious pain point in DITA 1.2!
Champions: DITA learning & Training subcommittee and Mark Myers, SAP

 Can provide a sorting phrase for the content of an
element
 Useful for sorting in non-Western languages such as
Japanese
<sort-as> element
18

 <cite> in titles
 @rev on <title>
 <draft-comment> in more places
 <sub> and <sup> available in <indexterm>
 Et cetera
Miscellaneous fixes
19

DITA for information architects and practitioners …

Scoped keys
 Provides a mechanism to have a single key
resolve to different references in different
parts of a map.
 Enables:
– Material from different companies or teams to be
combined without key collision.
 Example:
– Acme uses the key “company-products” to point to
an overview of their products.
– But so does Ajax 
– With scoped keys, the content from these two
companies can be combined in a single
deliverable.
Champion: Chris Nitchie, Oberon Technologies

Scoped keys: Use cases
 Omnibus publications
– Combine multiple standalone maps
– Define a key scope for each standalone map to prevent
key collisions
 Multi-product publications
– Each product has common keys: overview, installing …
– Wrap each product area in a key scope to segregate key
definitions
 Template topics
– Reuse a set of topics with keyrefs for graphics and
variable text

Scoped keys: Example
<map>
<title>CIDM DITA Conferences</title>
<topichead navtitle="DITA Europe"
keyscope="dita-europe">
<keydef keys="hotel" href="holidayinn-munich.dita" />
<topicref href="aboutTheConference.dita" />
</topichead>
< topichead navtitle="DITA North America"
keyscope="dita-na">
<keydef keys="hotel" href="westin-seattle.dita" />
<topicref href="aboutTheConference.dita" />
</topichead>
</map>

Cross-deliverable addressing
 Mechanism for referencing content in another root
map
– Key-based; utilizes key scopes
 Enables:
– Production of large omnibus publications
– Useful for companies with large, cross-
linked publications

 Ability to reference multiple DITAVAL profiles within
maps
– On the root map
– On a map branch
 Previously, only a single DITAVAL profile could be associated
with a master map.
 Makes reuse more powerful
– Can reuse a topic multiple times in a map, each time with different filtering
conditions
– Common use cases:
• Installation instructions that vary by operating system
• Medical instructions to vary for adult patient vs. adult caretaker of child
Branch filtering
25
Champion: Robert Anderson, IBM

Support for RELAX NG
 RELAX NG becomes the normative XML grammar for
DITA
 Enables:
– Single-sourcing of DTDs and XSDs from the RELAX NG
– Much easier to create document-type shells and
specializations
 GitHub utility for generating DTD and XSD from
RELAX NG source
Champion: Eliot Kimber, Individual member (Contrext) – and special
thanks to George Bina, SyncroSoft

 Enables architects to change default cascading behavior
for filtering attributes in maps
 Consider the following DITA 1.2 example:
@cascade attribute (1 of 2)
27
<map product=“Widget" platform="windows mac linux">
<title>All about Widget</title>

<topichead navtitle="Linux install”
platform="linux">
<!– Only applies to Linux -->

</topichead>
</map>

© 2015 Eberlein Consulting, LLC28
@cascade attribute (2 of 2)
<map product=“Widget" platform="windows mac linux">
<title>All about Widget</title>

<topichead navtitle="Linux install”
platform="linux“
cascade=“nomerge” >
<!– Only applies to Linux -->
</topichead>
</map>
Adding the @cascade attribute controls whether values set higher
in the map cascade to the element.

 The filtering attributes (audience,
platform, product, and otherprops) now
accept grouped values.
 Makes it possible for users to filter
content based on a combination of
products, audiences, or platforms.
Expanded syntax for filtering attributes (1 of 2)
29

 DITA 1.2
<step product=“db2 oracle was”>
 DITA 1.3
<step product="database(db2 oracle)
appserver(WAS)">
 Can filter on attribute subcategory. For example, allows
authors to filter on "database" and "appserver" without
the two interfering with each other.
Expanded syntax for filtering attributes (2 of 2.)
30

 Useful as a specialization base
– Can group multiple block-level elements
– Used in new learning & training domain
 Useful for authors
– Can group blocks of elements for reuse
<div> element
31

Questions?
Kristen James Eberlein
Eberlein Consulting, LLC
Durham, NC, USA
kris@eberleinconsulting.com
+1 (919) 682-2290
kriseberlein on Skype

Resources: DITA 1.3
 DITA 1.3 specification
The URL links to the most recent official version of the specification. In
October 2015, it linked to the Candidate OASIS Standard, published 3
September 2015.
 DITA 1.3: Why Three Editions?
Working draft 04, 29 October 2015.
 Overview of DITA 1.3
PDFs of presentations given by Kristen James Eberlein (Eberlein
Consulting LLC) at conferences in 2014
 DITA 1.3 Webinar
PDF and link to recording of a Webinar jointly sponsored by the DITA TC
and DITA Adoption TC in August 2014.
 Demo of key scopes
Illustration of using key scopes with Titania Delivery. Shows the DITA
source and rendering with and without key scopes.

Resources: Adoption TC feature articles
 Understanding Scoped Keys in DITA 1.3
Authored by Leigh W. White (IXIASOFT); published September
2015.
 About the DITA 1.3 release management domain
Authored by Tom Cihak (Freescale) and Keith Schengli-Roberts
(IXIASOFT); published June 2015.
 Using DITA 1.3 Troubleshooting
Authored by Bob Thomas (Tagsmiths); published July 2014
 Making the Most of the New Math Domains in DITA 1.3
Authored by Autumn Cuellar (Design Science), published April
2015.

Overview of DITA 1.3

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