DITA Topic Elements

DITA Topic Elements Tutorial

DITA is in many ways an enhanced version of HTML, with a strong focus on web-based publication of content.

The main structure of a DITA topic has a body, and a head area with the document title and other metadata. It is no surprise that DITA's internal element structure is very similar to HTML, with block elements (like p and div in HTML), inline elements (like spans in HTML), and images, lists, and tables.

There are only three required elements in DITA. All others are optional

The container itself, e.g., topic or concept (parallel to the <html></html> tags)
The title (parallel to the <title></title> tags)
The body (parallel to the <body></body> tags)

Not all DITA elements are named the same as their HTML counterparts. This can cause some confusion.

And there are several elements unique to DITA. These are extensions of HTML, in the spirit of XML (eXtensible Markup Language).

Here are some elements unique to DITA

shortdesc - a short description that summarizes the topic. It might be the first sentence. It is used to provide search results.
prolog - includes metadata like author, audience, copyright.
titlealts - an element with two subelements
- navtitle - used in the navigation
- searchtitle - used in search results

Here are some elements with new names and new uses in DITA

phrase
keyword
example
links - DITA has three kinds of hyperlinks
- xref - the DITA name for an inline hyperlink
- related-link - special links that are published at the end of a topic (like a see also)
- reltables (relationship tables) - links generated in DITA Maps that are published at the end of topics like related links.

To find a specific element in the language specification, simply go to the DITA Infocenter and search for it.