DITA Support in Serna

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is a popular XML-based architecture for authoring technical documentation.

DITA encourages writing of content as modular topics. Content is devided into small, self-contained topics that can be reused in different deliverables and single-sourced in a variety of ways. This approach is opposed to writing long "book-oriented" files such as Docbook. DITA topic-oriented approach emphasizes modularity and reuse of topics as concise units of information. Also, fragments of content within topics can be reused.

Serna provides a convenient way for authoring DITA documents.

Figure 1. DITA document opened in Serna.

• Types of DITA documents

  Serna supports DITA 1.0 and DITA 1.1 document types, as well as lets you work with DITA specializations.

  Note:

  Although Serna supports both versions of DITA, DITA 1.0 is obsolescent . We recommend that you create DITA 1.1 documents.

• Operations with DITA documents

  In Serna, you can do the following operations with DITA documents:

  • Create DITA documents out-of-the-box

    DITA 1.0 and DITA 1.1 documents can easily be created in Serna by means of ready-made document templates.

  • Open DITA documents with a single click

    Serna lets you open documents with a single click thanks to document templates that associate all necessary metadata with a certain document type.

    Serna has document templates for both DITA 1.0 and DITA 1.1 documents. However, all DITA documents are opened by default as DITA 1.1 documents.

  • Publish DITA documents to HTML and PDF

    DITA documents can be published to HTML and PDF format. Publishing to PDF can be done either with FOP out-of-the-box or with Antenna House XSL Formatter.

• Authoring DITA documents

  The major peculiarities of DITA authoring lie in the following:

  • Work with references

    Referencing is an effective means of content reuse in DITA. Content reuse is available at different levels (elements, topics, maps) by means of different types of references.

    Serna's DITA usability tools greatly simplify different operations with references in DITA documents. Besides, Serna validates references and lets you navigate to the target of a reference.

    Important:

    All versions of Serna support DITA. However, DITA usability tools, which facilitate the insertion of common DITA constructs, and reference navigation are available in the Enterprise edition and the trial version of Serna only.

  • DITA ID management

    In DITA, the uniqueness of ID attributes within a specific scope is essential for making references.

    DITA IDs are ID attributes of non-topic elements. Unlike IDs of topic elements, which must be unique within the scope of the whole document, DITA IDs must be unique within the scope of the parent topic or map. DITA IDs are specially treated in Serna.

    When you work with DITA documents, Serna maintains the uniqueness of DITA elements' IDs and reports duplicate DITA IDs.

  • Work with DITA custom content

    You can use DITA custom content to quickly insert the most common DITA content portions. DITA custom content differs from Docbook custom content.

  • Work with images

    Learn about supported image formats and placement of images in DITA documents.

  • Deprecated content

    Some XML content is inadvisable in DITA.

• Types of DITA Documents
  
• Operations with DITA Documents
  
• Authoring DITA Documents