Thanks, Yves! I'll certainly bear that in mind.

Hi Niels ;-)

Like Eliot said: conrefs are the way to go. Just put your "variables" in a "conref library" file (a simple DITA topic) and conref them to your heart's content.

With DITA-FMx, you can even use variables in FrameMaker and they will be rebuilt when you generate a FM book from your ditamap. This is taken from the DITA-FMx Help:

"Before running the Generate Book from Map command, run the Prepare Variables command on all files that contain FrameMaker variables. This wraps each variable in a ph element and assigns the variable name to the keyref attribute using the format “fmvar:VARNAME” (where VARNAME is the name of the variable). After conversion to a book and chapter files, you can run the Rebuild Variables command to rebuild live variables from the data stored in the ph elements."

If you want to see DITA-FMx at work, just let me know. I'll be happy to come and give you a DITA update at Brussels Airport.

Regards 

Yves Barbion
Scripto
Belgium

In DITA, there are two basic ways to get the effect of "variables"

• Use conref from <ph> to <ph> (or whatever the appropriate inline element is, if the variable is something more specific than a phrase, e.g., a UI component or a glossary term or something).
• Define the "variable" in a reference entry or glossary entry and use xref to reflect the value (and create a navigable link) where it's needed.

Note that in DITA 1.2 the keyref feature will provide a third way to do this, which is to define the "variable" as a keyed topicref that simply contains the text (rather than pointing to another element). In addition, you'll be able to use keys for conref.

These two features will let you have map-specific bindings of keys to values, e.g., to get a different product name for reference to the key "prodname" or whatever.

Note that you should never, under any circumstances, ever use XML entities in DITA content. Never. Ever.