Specialization is the process by which new designs are created based on existing designs, allowing new kinds of content to be processed using existing processing rules.

Specialization allows you to define new kinds of information (new structural types or new domains of information), while reusing as much of existing design and code as possible, and minimizing or eliminating the costs of interchange, migration, and maintenance.

The architectural specification describes specialization at

• http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.0/archspec/ditaspecialization.html.

The following articles provide additional information:

Introduction to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture - IBM developerWorks, 01 Mar 2001, Updated 28 Sep 2005
This document is a roadmap for DITA: what it is and how it applies to technical documentation.

Specialization in the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (IBM)

An XML-based information architecture for learning content, Part 1: A DITA specialization design (IBM)

Specializing topic types in DITA (IBM)

DITA Specialization - Matching Your Needs (Arbortext)

Specializing domains in DITA (IBM)