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Frequently Asked Questions about the Darwin Information Typing Architecture

Answers about the XML-based Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) for documentation

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The structure of a DITA topic

A topic is structured by required elements (shown here with orange labels) and optional elements (shown with purple labels). The body of a topic allows for rich description (blue text fields and green containing blocks). A topic may directly include one or more child topics in its {include zone}.


 

[topic]

[title]Title for the topic
{document metadata}

 
[body]
 
  [p]A topic may contain nearly any combination of text elements, including lists...
 
[ul]
  • [li]List item.
  • [li]List item.

[p]definition lists...
 
[dl]
[dt]Term
[dd]And its definition...

[p]and so on.

{include zone}

And here is how that topic might appear in a structured editor in its "tags-on" mode:

{short description of image}

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