Introduction
Information types and topics
Topics are the building blocks of modular documents, and organising topics by semantic information types is one of the architectural features of DITA.
DITA map files
Syntax and mark-up
Language and punctuation
Graphics and figures
Cross-referencing
Cross-references are a means of binding individual topics into a coherent and navigable document.
Content re-use
Metadata, conditional processing, and indexing
The DITA documentation process
- Structured authoring documentation stages
  The documentation process within a DITA workflow can be separated into stages of building, associating, and publishing.
- Unit testing in a team
  A process where multiple authors are working on a large repository of topics can make it difficult to manage the quality and consistency of the content. Unit testing is a technique to identify validation errors earlier in the documentation process.
- Restricting authors and limiting element choices
  To make it easier for authors to choose semantic mark-up elements, it is possible to reduce the number of elements available for selection. This restriction can be managed by an authoring tool, or through the constraints mechanism introduced in DITA 1.2.
- File and folder naming conventions
  Using an organisation-wide, well-documented file naming and folder structure convention will improve the usability of the authoring process for DITA authors, especially those working in a team.
- Elements for pre-publish review
  The draft-comment element allows review and discussion information to be embedded within topic mark-up. The more basic XML comment can also be used for a similar purpose.
- The DITA publishing process
  XSL-T and XSL-FO are the technologies that underpin most DITA publishing tools.
- Page numbering in page layout documents
  A single page number sequence through an entire page layout document generated from DITA is often preferable to the traditional system of different page number sequences for front matter and back matter.
- Content Management Systems
  Although it is possible to create, manage and edit content in DITA without a CMS, it is invariably easier with the aid of a CMS.
DITA authoring concepts
Moving from style-based authoring to a structured authoring methodology such as DITA requires a radically different approach to writing.

Elements for pre-publish review

The draft-comment element allows review and discussion information to be embedded within topic mark-up. The more basic XML comment can also be used for a similar purpose.

In a typical documentation process, incomplete information will often prevent the completion of a topic. To help track and manage the incomplete information, an author can add draft-comment phrase elements. The draft-comment element is also useful during the peer review and editing stages to leave remarks or suggestions for the author to consider or implement.

The draft-comment element has an author attribute, used to record the name of the author of the comment. An example of the mark-up is:

<p>The MY11 XRW uses an AHA turbocharger.
  <draft-comment author="Leo">
     Check if this changed after product meeting
  </draft-comment>
<p>

The draft-comment element should not be confused with the required-cleanup element. The required-cleanup element is intended only for identifying text in imported topics (typically, topics converted from XHTML to DITA) where the mark-up was not cleanly converted. In other words, required-cleanup content needs a human author to manually correct the mark-up to preserve the original intent.

Any draft-comment content will normally be removed during the publishing process. However, some authoring tools allow draft-comment elements to be deliberately included in the output.

The draft-comment element is not allowed in some structures. An alternative is to use standard XML comment special element. Many authoring tools allow the addition of XML comments in the WYSIOO editor.

The mark-up of an XML comment is shown in the example:

<!-- Check that the last step is required for MY11 model -->