Glossary · Information types

DITA topic

Also known as: topic, generic topic

In DITA, a topic is a unit of information with a title and content that is short enough to be specific to a single subject and can be understood on its own. The generic topic type, <topic>, is the base from which all other DITA topic types are specialized.

DITA
Information typing

In one sentence

A DITA topic is a titled, self-contained unit about one subject; <topic> is the base type all other DITA topic types are specialized from.

Example

A topic with the title “About this manual”, a one-sentence short description and two paragraphs, stored as about-this-manual.dita.

Explained in context

Context cards connect this term with others to answer one question. Also in British English and German.

How it applies

Technical documentation: The topic is the unit of authoring, review, translation and reuse. The generic <topic> element is rarely used for final content; writers use its specializations such as concept, task and reference.
Structure: Every topic has an id and a <title>, followed optionally by a short description (<shortdesc>), a <prolog> for metadata, a body and related links. Topics can nest, but most teams keep one topic per file.
AI and retrieval: Because a topic is written to stand on its own, it is a good retrieval chunk. The <shortdesc> is especially useful: it is written as a summary and can be shown as a search snippet or used as the embedding text.

DITA topic vs. iiRDS Topic

A DITA topic is an XML document with a defined structure. An iiRDS Topic is a metadata resource describing a self-contained unit of content in any format. A DITA topic published to HTML and packaged with iiRDS metadata becomes an iiRDS Topic with an HTML rendition.

In DITA markup

<topic id="about-this-manual">
  <title>About this manual</title>
  <shortdesc>This manual describes installation, operation and maintenance.</shortdesc>
  <body>
    <p>Read all safety information before you start.</p>
  </body>
</topic>