What's new in the DITA 1.3 implementation

More, better organized and recognizable, variables

Many DITA elements share the same set of basic elements, and the DITA DTDs use a large number of entities to define building blocks. Most of the entities in the DITA DTDs are now mapped to FrameMaker variables. However, as variables cannot be nested, all nested entities from the DTDs had to be resolved.

Specialized elements are defined in variables, which carry the name of the base element and the domain in which the specializations are defined. Each variable starts with a pipe symbol and ends with a space. This allows easy addition and removal of variables in general rules as well as specifications for context rules.

More, easier to recognize, conditional text tags

Element definitions in domain specialization modules, as well as their occurrence in other EDD modules, are made conditional. Each domain condition contains the abbreviated name of the domain. This makes it easy to hide an entire domain. Examples are domain-pr-d, domain-hi-d, domain-sw-d.

All variables for specialized elements are marked with the domain condition of the domain to which they belong. This ensures that the elements are suppressed from all the general rules and specifications of context rules when their domain is excluded via the domain condition.

Apart from the domain conditions, a number of conditions have been added to remove some base elements from the rules. These conditions are named according to their purpose, e.g. topic-generalTask or topic-machineryTask.

Also, the definition of a single root element requires specific conditions, which are named accordingly, e.g. root-topic, root-learningAssessment.

New domains, elements and attributes

All new domains, elements and attributes defined in DITA 1.3 are added. Information about these additions can be found in the official DITA 1.3 specification documents.