Specializing Domains in DITA

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML architecture for extensible technical information. A domain extends DITA with a set of elements whose names and content models are unique to an organization or field of knowledge. Architects and authors can combine elements from any number of domains, leading to great flexibility and precision in capturing the semantics and structure of their information. In this overview, you'll learn how to define your own domains. This article shows you how to leverage the extensible DITA DTD to describe new domains of information. In current approaches, DTDs are static, as a result, DTD designers try to cover every contingency and, when this effort fails, users have to force their information to fit existing types. DITA changes this situation by giving information architects and developers the power to extend a base DTD to cover their domains.