DITA 1.2 support

DITA Open Toolkit 4.2 supports the DITA 1.2 specification. While 1.2 is no longer the latest version of DITA, the grammar files (DTD and XML Schema) are still included with DITA-OT and content explicitly created for 1.2 continues to work as intended.

Highlights of DITA 1.2 support in the toolkit include:
  • Processing support for all new elements and attributes
  • Link redirection and text replacement using @keyref
  • New @processing-role attribute in maps to allow references to topics that will not produce output artifacts
  • New content reference extensions, including the ability to reference a range of elements, to push content into another topic, and to use keys for resolving a @conref attribute.
  • The ability to filter content with controlled values and taxonomies using Subject Scheme Maps
  • Processing support for both default versions of task (original, limited task, and the general task with fewer constraints on element order)
  • Acronym and abbreviation support with the new <abbreviated-form> element
  • New link grouping abilities available with headers in relationship tables
  • OASIS Subcommittee specializations from the learning and machine industry domains (note that the core toolkit contains only basic processing support for these, but can be extended to produce related artifacts such as SCORM modules)

To find detailed information about any of these features, see the specification documents at OASIS. The DITA Adoption Technical Committee has also produced several papers to describe individual new features. In general, the white papers are geared more towards DITA users and authors, while the specification is geared more towards tool implementors, though both may be useful for either audience. The DITA Adoption papers can be found from that committee’s main web page.