DITA is a difficult thing to explain to the uninitiated. It is difficult because we expect it to be a product or a technology, when it is actually a standard and a methodology. DITA provides an approach to technical writing that embraces best practice ideals such as modularity, single-sourcing, and content re-use. The reasons for moving to DITA are business-focused.
Modular documents are efficient
Wouldn't it be good if you could write documentation in components, and then build those components into different documents depending on requirements? Such a modular document approach can be applied effectively in many different scenarios. The approach is very efficient, because you only have to write and maintain a piece of information once. If you make a change in one component, the change flows through to every document that uses that component. The term re-use is sometimes used when describing this feature.
Modular documentation is not a new idea. It was even used before computerization, in the "Typewriter Age", within a writing methodology know as STOP: Sequential Thematic Organisation of Publications. The STOP methodology called the document components “topical units of discourse”; we now usually refer to those components as “topics”.
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