Add new tags to DITA file

Question

I'm starting with DITA technology. I have read about the basic structure of a DITA document. Now, I doubt arises as follows:

How can I add my own tags to a DITA document?, Should I create a .DTD file based on a topic.dtd like http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.2/cd03/dtd1.2/base/dtd/basetopic.dtd?

Regards!

Answer 1

In DITA the process of modifying the base vocabulary is called specialization.

There is a very good specialization tutorial here:

http://www.xiruss.org/tutorials/dita-specialization/

The DITA Users List is also a very good place to ask DITA-related questions as a lot of DITA experts monitor it.

Regards, Radu

Answer 2

Specialization is the most important aspect of the DITA architecture. It enables you to take an existing DITA element or attribute, and then refine it further. (You can only use specialization to make something "narrower"; you cannot "expand" on the original item from which you specialized.)

But before you specialize elements or attributes, make sure that you have looked closer at the existing DITA elements and attributes, and determined that they do not meet your needs. Often people new to DITA create specializations because they do not fully understand what is already available to them, which is unfortunate.

I second Radu's suggestion of using the Yahoo! dita-users list to solicit feedback from people with lots of DITA expertise.