DITA processing

DITA includes markup that processors can use to generate reader navigation to or across DITA topics. Such navigation behaviors include table of contents (TOCs) and indexes.

The DITA conref attributes provide mechanisms for reusing content. DITA content references support reuse scenarios that are difficult or impossible to implement using other XML-based inclusion mechanisms like XInclude and entities. Additionally, DITA content references have rules that help ensure that the results of content inclusion remain valid after resolution

The branch filtering mechanism enables map authors to set filtering conditions for specific branches of a map. This makes it possible for multiple conditional-processing profiles to be applied within a single publication.

Content can be chunked (divided or merged into new output documents) in different ways for the purposes of delivering content and navigation. For example, content best authored as a set of separate topics might need to be delivered as a single Web page. A map author can use the @chunk attribute to split up multi-topic documents into component topics or to combine multiple topics into a single document as part of output processing.

DITA has features that facilitate preparing content for translation and working with multilingual content, including the @xml:lang attribute, the @dir attribute, and the @translate attribute. In addition, the <sort-as> and <index-sort-as> elements provide support for sorting in languages in which the correct sorting of an element requires text that is different from the base content of the element.

When DITA elements are copied from one document to another, processors need to determine the validity of the copied elements. This copying might occur as the result of a content reference (conref) or key reference (keyref), or it might occur in the context of an author editing a DITA document.

Processors can be configured to sort elements. Typical processing includes sorting glossary entries, lists of parameters or reference entries in custom navigation structures, and tables based on the contents of cells in specific columns or rows.