DITA Readme

This document describes the package content, change history, and some release notes for the package called "dita12.zip" on developerWorks.

Related links
Introduction to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture
Specializing topic types in DITA
Specializing domain types in DITA
DITA Frequently Asked Questions
DITA Forum jump page
DITA 1.2 DTDs, stylesheets, sample documents

Installing DITA

Please read and understand the IBM Darwin Information Typing Architecture Specification Agreement.

The DITA package has the following directory structure:

dita12
  css
  demo
    elementref
    faq
  doc
    images


  dtd
  samples
    concepts
    image
    tasks
  schema
    java
  xsl

Use an unzip tool to extract the package into a location of your choice.

Using DITA stylesheets

These are examples of command-line invocations of popular XSLT engines to produce this particular document (DITA-readme.xml) as an HTML result:
Figure 1. Sample processing invocations

Changes for this release

Following the initial public distribution of DITA in March 2000, IBM's "XML Workgroup" has been using the tools in several significant prototypes. Based on feedback both from external forums and these prototype activities, the Workgroup provided some updates to the DITA tools in an October 2001 package called dita01.zip.

Release 1.0 (dita10.zip) was the result of a series of reviews and usability studies that led to a number of new or better understood design features, including domain specialization. The most succinct description of these features is in the Introduction to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture article, under the heading "Main features of the DITA architecture."

Revision 1.1 was an unpublished intermediate fix level.

The current revision 1.2 incorporates additional DTD fixes (including an expected change to the former <ifcond> model in task.dtd) and adds 3 new elements (<sl>, <sli>, and <screen>).

In addition, this revision provides a new map information type to define hierarchical lists of topics. The hierarchy can be used as a navigation hierarchy for a help system or to aggregate topics as nested sections for a book. Thus, for books, the map is parallel with the table of contents generated by the book.

This DITA release includes an implementation of the topic architecture in XML Schema. The DITA schema depends on advanced features of XML Schema. In our testing, most tools do not provide a complete implementation of XML Schema and, as a result, may not be able to process documents with the DITA schema. The DTDs are still the canonical representation of DITA.

Important closing words...

The wisdom in the IBM Darwin Information Typing Architecture Specification Agreement included with this package is very important. The DITA design has progressed greatly, but it is still evolutionary. It is possible that documents created with the current version of these DTDs will need to be modified to work with future versions of the DTDs. The DITA team encourages you to use the dtds and tools and to help us advance the design, with the understanding that this package is unsupported. As with any new technology, always do an appropriate risk assessment and ensure that you have a backup plan.

Now, specialize away!

Don Day
dond@us.ibm.com
IBM Corporation, Austin, Texas