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Hallo,

I read the DITA Architectural and Language Specification and a book about topic orientate writing, but I still have the problem, that I often don’t know if I should write content in a reference or a concept topic. The examples often do not help me because I write documentation for machines and not only for software.

How have you learned that?

One example:

During the machine is running the user have to do some activities. I have a topic with the following content (in a table):

when...           |      activity 

continuously   |       * Do...

                             * Do...

daily              |       * Do...

                             * Do...

if necessary    |       * Do...

                              * Do...

Another example:

 

I have a picture which shows a component of a machine and under the picture is a legend with the name and description of the components. Is it a concept topic because not every reader needs the information and because it is an overview of the product?

Nina