Taxonomies and subject classification

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A natural complement to topic orientation, in which topics are made independent of one another, are various organizing methods for topics.

The DITA map offers authors several ways to organize topics, but users who encounter a DITA map may not wish to access their topics the way the author of the DITA map expected.

An alternate method to access topics is by subject or, in general, by some combination of properties of the topics. For this reason, there is active interest within some parts of the DITA community in being able to work with taxonomies and subject classification in DITA.

Future approaches to subject classification include a method for building a taxonomy (implemented using maps) and a new <data> element that can be used to state properties of other elements. To permit experimentation with the map-based approach, a Taxonomy specialization plug-in for the DITA toolkit is available.

Some DITA-specific background articles and presentations on taxonomy and subject classification:

• Subject classification with DITA and SKOS (DeveloperWorks)
• Managing Semantics with Content Using DITA XML (Semantic Technologies Conference)

Other background articles:

• Developing and Creatively Leveraging Hierarchical Metadata and Taxonomy (Boxes and Arrows)
• Preparing a controlled vocabulary for content management and access: an indexer’s perspective (The Earley Report)
• Ontologies Come of Age (MIT Press)
• Topic maps and how they relate to other subject classification schemes: Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? Topic Maps! (ontopia.net)

Corrections to this page are warmly invited.

Broader topic: Specializations

Narrower topics:

• Future approaches to subject classification
• Taxonomy specialization plug-in