Ensuring compliance with evolving standards is a critical aspect of aerospace organizations’ documentation efforts. They leverage DITA, along with several strategies, to guarantee that content remains in alignment with the ever-changing aerospace standards and regulations.

Version Control and Revision History

One fundamental approach involves robust version control and revision history within DITA content. Each document or topic is assigned a version number and a revision history is maintained. This allows aerospace organizations to trace the evolution of their documentation over time, ensuring that they have a comprehensive record of all changes made to meet new standards.

Specialization for Standards

Aerospace organizations may create DITA specialization profiles tailored to the specific standards they need to adhere to. These profiles define structured conventions and elements to ensure that documents are consistently formatted and include all required content for compliance. For instance, these profiles may include elements for specific compliance sections, making it clear what information needs to be included in documents.

Example:

Here’s an example of a DITA topic that shows version control and specialization elements for compliance:

<topic id="compliance_checklist">
  <title>Compliance Checklist</title>
  <version>1.2</version>
  <last-revised>2023-10-20</last-revised>
  <revised-by>AeroDocTeam</revised-by>
  <content>...
  <compliance-section>
    <compliance-rule>AR-1001</compliance-rule>
    <compliance-description>Structural Integrity Requirements</compliance-description>
  </compliance-section>
  <compliance-section>
    <compliance-rule>AR-2022</compliance-rule>
    <compliance-description>Environmental Regulations</compliance-description>
  </compliance-section>
  <compliance-section>
    <compliance-rule>AR-3005</compliance-rule>
    <compliance-description>Safety Protocols</compliance-description>
  </compliance-section>

In this example, the DITA topic includes version information, revision history, and specialized elements for compliance rules and descriptions, ensuring that the content is up-to-date and adheres to aerospace standards.