Reference
The DITA Reference topic describes the regular features of a subject or product, such as the commands in a programming language or an application programming interface (API). DITA Reference topics can provide information on any subject that has regular content, including recipes, catalogs, bibliographies, and similar structured descriptive information.
A Reference contains the following primary tags:
• reference — Contains all of the other tags
• title — The subject of the topic
• shortdesc — A short description or overview of the topic
• prolog — Various types of metadata about the topic, such as author, copyright, index terms, and so forth
• refbody — Contains the actual content of the topic
A Reference is typically organized into one or more sections, tables, and lists that you can arrange in any order. Following are the primary tags in the Reference body:
◦ section — A container for content that you want to group in a reference
◦ refsyn — Syntax or similar information
◦ properties — A list of properties associated with the subject of the reference, usually presented as a table
◦ example — Examples that illustrate or support the reference information
The refbody tag can also contain the standard DITA tables.
• related-links — Contains cross reference links to related information
Most of these tags are optional, so you only use the ones you need to author the topic.
Parent topic