Authors can easily identify and use specialized elements in DITA authoring tools by following these steps:

Identification: To identify specialized elements, authors need to reference the documentation or guidelines provided by their organization or team. This documentation should outline the available specialized elements and their intended use cases.

Insertion: To insert a specialized element in a DITA document, authors typically use the DITA authoring tool’s interface. They can often find these specialized elements in a menu or toolbar specifically designed for DITA authoring. Authors select the desired element and insert it into their document.

Attributes: Specialized elements may have associated attributes that authors can set to provide additional information or customization. These attributes are often configured through the DITA authoring tool’s attribute editor or a properties panel.

Validation: DITA authoring tools typically provide real-time validation to ensure that authors correctly use specialized elements. This validation can include checking for required attributes and element placement, as well as validating against the specialization constraints defined in the document’s DTD or schema.

Example:

Let’s consider an example where an author wants to use a specialized element <code-example> for displaying code snippets in a software documentation project:

<!-- Inserting a specialized DITA element for code examples -->
<code-example language="python">
  <title>Sample Python Code</title>
  <code>
    print("Hello, World!")
  </code>
</code-example>