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Language reference: All-inclusive edition
The language reference portion of the DITA specification contains a topic for each DITA element. The topic defines the element, its inheritance hierarchy, and provides examples of usage. This portion of the DITA specification also includes information about DITA attributes.
Topic elements
The base topic elements include elements that make up the core building blocks of the DITA topic, such as topic, body, and related-links, as well as elements like <p> and <ph> that are used in many topic specializations. Some of these elements are also available inside the <topicmeta> map element.
Table elements
DITA topics support two types of tables. The <table> element uses the OASIS Exchange Table Model (formerly known as the CALS table model). The OASIS table supports the spanning of multiple rows or columns for special layout or organizational needs, and provides a wide variety of controls over the display properties of the data and even the table structure itself.
<entry>
The <entry> element defines a single cell in a table.

Specification URIs
Notices
Introduction to DITA 1.3
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) specification defines a set of document types for authoring and organizing topic-oriented information, as well as a set of mechanisms for combining, extending, and constraining document types.
Architectural specification: All-inclusive edition
The architectural specification portion of the DITA specification outlines the framework of DITA. It contains an overview of DITA markup; addressing; processing; configuration, specialization, generalization, and constraints; as well as information about coding DITA grammar files.
Language reference: All-inclusive edition
The language reference portion of the DITA specification contains a topic for each DITA element. The topic defines the element, its inheritance hierarchy, and provides examples of usage. This portion of the DITA specification also includes information about DITA attributes.
- Element quick reference
  This section contains a listing of DITA elements.
- Topic elements
  The base topic elements include elements that make up the core building blocks of the DITA topic, such as topic, body, and related-links, as well as elements like <p> and <ph> that are used in many topic specializations. Some of these elements are also available inside the <topicmeta> map element.
  - Basic topic elements
    The generic topic structure is used for untyped topics. While much of the DITA architecture is built on generic topics, it is generally better to use more specific information types (such as concept, task, or reference) when they are available.
  - Body elements
    The body elements support the most common types of content authoring for topics: paragraphs, lists, phrases, figures, and other common types of exhibits in a document.
  - Table elements
    DITA topics support two types of tables. The <table> element uses the OASIS Exchange Table Model (formerly known as the CALS table model). The OASIS table supports the spanning of multiple rows or columns for special layout or organizational needs, and provides a wide variety of controls over the display properties of the data and even the table structure itself.
    - <table>
      The <table> element organizes arbitrarily complex relationships of tabular information. This standard table markup allows column or row spanning and table captions or descriptions. An optional title allowed inside the <table> element provides a caption to describe the table.
    - <tgroup>
      The <tgroup> element in a table contains the header and body rows of a table.
    - <colspec>
      The <colspec> element contains a column specification for a table, including assigning a column name and number, cell content alignment, and column width.
    - <thead>
      The <thead> element is a table header that precedes the table body (<tbody>) element in a complex table.
    - <tbody>
      The <tbody> element contains the rows in a table.
    - <row>
      The <row> element contains a single row in a table.
    - <entry>
      The <entry> element defines a single cell in a table.
    - <simpletable>
      The <simpletable> element is used for tables that are regular in structure and do not need a caption. Choose the <simpletable> element when you want to show information in regular rows and columns. For example, multi-column tabular data such as phone directory listings or parts lists are good candidates for <simpletable>. Another good use of <simpletable> is for information that seems to beg for a three-part definition list; the @keycol attribute can be used to indicate which column represents the "key" or term-like column of your structure.
    - <sthead>
      The <sthead> element contains an optional header row for a <simpletable> element.
    - <strow>
      The <strow> element contains a single row inside of a <simpletable> element.
    - <stentry>
      The <stentry> element represents a single cell within a <simpletable> element. You can place any number of <stentry> cells in either an <sthead> element (for headings) or <strow> element (for rows of data).
  - Related links elements
    The related-links section of DITA topics is a special structure that contains links. Links support navigation from a topic to other related topics or resources.
- Map elements
  Map elements include the core components of DITA maps, such as <topicref> and <reltable>, as well as general purpose map specializations in the map group domain.
- Metadata elements
  Metadata elements include information that is located within the <topicmeta> element (in maps) or <prolog> element (in topics), as well as indexing elements that can be placed in additional locations within topic content.
- Domain elements
  General purpose domains are not specific to any type of information, such as the hazard statement domain that provides elements for describing hazardous situations.
- Classification elements
  Classification elements support managing metadata. Those in the subject scheme map are used to define controlled values and to bind the controlled values to DITA attributes as enumerations. Those declared in the classification domain are used in other maps to classify content according to the scheme.
- Specialization elements
  Several DITA elements exist either for architectural reasons or for support of specialized markup yet to be designed. Although there is little need to use these elements unless you are directed to, some of them, such as <state>, can be used if your content makes use of these semantic distinctions. For example, a discussion of signals on a gate of an integrated logic circuit might use the <state> element to represent either on or off conditions of that gate.
- Legacy conversion elements
  Conversion elements exist primarily to aid in the conversion of content to DITA.
- DITAVAL elements
  A conditional processing profile (DITAVAL file) is used to identify which values are to be used for conditional processing during a particular output, build, or some other purpose. The profile should have an extension of .ditaval.
- Technical content elements
  Elements in the technical content section include the original Concept, Task, and Reference specializations, as well as specializations added in later releases. It also includes domains designed primarily for technical content.
- Learning and training elements
  Elements in the learning and training section include specialized topics, maps, content, and metadata elements specially designed to support instructional content.
- Attributes
  This section collects commonly used attributes, with common definitions. If an element uses a different definition, or narrows the scope of, an otherwise common attribute, it will be called out in the topic that defines the element.
Conformance
Conformance to the DITA specification allows documents and document types that are used with different processors or different versions of a processor to produce the same or similar results with little or no reimplementation or modification.
Acknowledgments
(Non-normative) Many members of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee participated in the creation of this specification and are gratefully acknowledged.
Non-normative information
This section contains non-normative information, including topics about new features in DITA 1.3 and migrating from DITA 1.2 to DITA 1.3.
Content models for learning and training package
For each element in the learning and training package, this section presents the content model and a list of parent elements that can contain that element.

`<entry>`

The <entry> element defines a single cell in a table.

Content models

See appendix for information about this element in OASIS document type shells.

Inheritance

- topic/entry

Example

See table.

Attributes

The following attributes are available on this element: Universal attribute group (without the Metadata attribute group), @base and @rev from the Metadata attribute group, outputclass, and the attributes defined below. This element also uses @align, @char, @charoff, @colsep, @rowsep, and @valign from the Complex-table attribute group.

@rotate

Indicates whether the contents of the entry is rotated. While the attribute is declared with the XML data type CDATA, the only predefined values are:

1: The contents of the cell are rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise.
0: No rotation occurs.
-dita-use-conref-target: See Using the -dita-use-conref-target value for more information.

If this attribute is not specified, no rotation occurs. In situations where a stylesheet or other formatting mechanism specifies table cell orientation, the @rotate attribute can be ignored.

@colname

Specifies the column name in which an entry is found. The value is a reference to the @colname attribute on the <colspec> element.

@namest

Specifies the first logical column that is included in a horizontal span. The value is a reference to the @colname attribute on the <colspec> element.

@nameend

Specifies the last logical column that is included in a horizontal span. The value is a reference to the @colname attribute on the <colspec> element.

@morerows

Specifies the number of additional rows to add in a vertical span.

@scope

The presence of the @scope attribute indicates that the current entry is a header for the specified scope. Allowable values are:

row: The current entry is a header for all cells in the row.
col: The current entry is a header for all cells in the column.
rowgroup: The current entry is a header for all cells in the rows spanned by this entry.
colgroup: The current entry is a header for all cells in the columns spanned by this entry.

@headers

Identifies one or more entry element headers that apply to its entry. The @headers attribute contains an unordered set of unique space-separated tokens, each of which is an ID reference of an entry from the same table.