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Introduction to DITA topic-based authoring with Adobe FrameMaker 8

What is DITA?

As its name states, DITA is an information architecture. DITA is mostly defined by a set of DTDs and a parallel set of schemas, which are maintained by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)—a nonprofit e-business consortium. DITA also enjoys the support of an increasing number of Open Source and commercial software products (such as Adobe FrameMaker 8) and add-ons that enable users to author and publish their content using the DITA content model.

DITA is more than just a schema/Document Type Definition (DTD). DITA represents an innovative philosophy and methodology for authoring and managing content. For example, with DITA, a document is not authored from beginning to end; instead, document components, or topics, are developed individually and assembled as needed (perhaps in a different sequence or hierarchy for different forms of output or target audiences) using a mechanism called a DITA map. DITA offers a number of such mechanisms that are combined to facilitate content reuse, multichannel publishing, and specialization (a form of customization) of structure to meet unique requirements.

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