Tips and techniques

New element name or just new class (specialization)

I'm quite new in spezialization. I ask myself when to change the name of the element my specialization is based on. Everybody might agree that the name must not be changed if the specialized element is a subset of the base element's content model.

E.g. Element A with content B, C+, E*

Specialized element A' with content  B, C+ is still Element A and so it may retain its name.

But if not: When would you start with a new element name and when a new class just will  do it.

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How to present visual tags in output that correspond to element attributes in a topic

Hi all,

We have a requirement to deliver context-sensitive content based on metadata on elements within a topic. One output is embedded into a third-party app and the correct content for each context is shown based on the metadata attributes. A custom XSLT is required to produce the right schema (i.e. we bypass DITA-OT processing entirely).

In PDF and XHTML, we need to show the content of all elements, with some visual way of describing their contexts. We use DITA-OT processing for these outputs.

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Using DITA for documenting a web-based application but forced to used mediawiki

hi (and apologies for the long text - it just did not work out shorter),

i work @ a company that creates web applications for government administrations (before that we delivered client-software). this software is used by a multitude of different stakeholders and therefore demands several types of documentation. our software is very feature-rich and highly configurable, our web interfaces are complex. so we need a flexible solution for a documentation that can easily be adjusted to fit different configurations.

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How can I combine several topics into a single document?

The DITA design has a unified content reuse mechanism by which an element can replace itself with the content of a like element elsewhere, either in the current topic or in a separate topic that shares the same content models. The distinction between reusable content and reusing content, often a problem for authors trying to use file and text entities, disappears: Any element with an ID, in any DITA topic, is reusable by conref.

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What if my information doesn't break down into topics?

Most information can be broken down into topics (headings and content). However, if your information requires a more seamless flow of information across topic boundaries, don't use this architecture.

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