The DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) standard was pioneered at IBM and is sponsored by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. OASIS defines DITA as “an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new information types and describing new information domains based on existing types and domains.”

To obtain more information on OASIS and DITA, refer to the OASIS web site at www.oasis-open.org/. Refer to the DITA Architectural Specification for an overview of the DITA standard. Refer to the DITA Language Reference for specific information about DITA elements and attributes. These documents are available on the OASIS web site and in the Arbortext Help Center.

Arbortext Editor supports the DITA standard and provides a sophisticated, flexible environment for authoring and publishing DITA documents. Arbortext Editor has customized configurations for editing both DITA topics and DITA maps.

Authoring a DITA topic is similar to working with other types of XML documents. A DITA topic is intended to be a modular document that provides discrete information about a single subject. The Arbortext Editor configuration for editing DITA topics is similar to the standard configuration for editing other types of XML documents. Arbortext Editor does provide a tool called the Resource Manager that assists you with locating content to include in your DITA topics.

Authoring a DITA map is a very different experience. DITA maps are XML documents, but are not intended to contain much text. Instead, you use DITA maps to collect references to DITA topics and other types of documents and to organize those references into a deliverable. A DITA map enables you to create a hierarchy for your DITA topics and other information resources that can serve as an outline, table of contents, or build manifest.

Arbortext Editor provides a unique set of tools to assist you in developing DITA maps. These tools enable you to locate content to include in a DITA map, to quickly insert references to one or more documents into the map, and to rearrange the map hierarchy with great flexibility. The Arbortext Editor interface for editing DITA maps is highly configurable, so you can customize it to suit your work style.

Once you have authored a DITA document, Arbortext Editor enables you to publish a DITA topic or map to several different output types. Default stylesheets for all of the DITA document types are included with Arbortext Editor. Arbortext Styler enables you to customize and enhance these stylesheets or to create your own stylesheets for DITA documents.