The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) specification
defines both a) a set of document types for authoring and organizing topic-oriented
information; and b) a set of mechanisms for combining and extending document
types using a process called specialization.
The specification consists of:
- The DTDs and schemas that define DITA markup for the base DITA document
types, as well as catalog files. While the DTDs and schemas should define
the same DITA elements, the DTDs are normative if there is ever any discrepancy.
- The language reference that provides explanations for each element in
the base DITA document types
- This document, which comes in three parts:
- an introduction, which provides background concepts and an overview of
the architecture
- the DITA markup specification, which provides an overview of DITA's base
document types
- the DITA specialization specification, which provides details of the mechanisms
DITA provides for defining and extending DITA document types.
This document is part of the technical specification for the DITA architecture.
While the specification does contain some introductory information, it is
not intended as an introduction to DITA nor as a users guide. The intended
audience of this specification consists of implementers of the DITA standard,
including tool developers and specializers.