What role does content profiling play in IT content reuse with DITA?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

Content profiling plays a pivotal role in optimizing IT content reuse within the DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) framework. It involves the systematic categorization and tagging of content components based on attributes such as audience, product version, platform, and more. This profiling enables precise content retrieval and assembly, making it an essential strategy for efficient content reuse.

1. Targeted Reuse: Content profiling allows content creators to assign specific attributes to content components. For example, you can tag content as “Windows OS” or “macOS OS” to indicate the applicable operating system. When authoring new documents, DITA filtering mechanisms can selectively include or exclude content based on these attributes. This targeted reuse ensures that content is highly relevant to the audience or product version, reducing redundancy and ensuring accuracy.

2. Example:

Suppose you have DITA topics for a software application:


<!-- DITA Content Profiling Example -->
<topic id="install-guide">
  <title>Installation Guide</title>
  <props>
    <prop att="audience">admin</prop>
    <prop att="os">Windows</prop>
  </props>
  <body>...
  </body>
</topic>

In this example, the “admin” attribute identifies the audience as administrators, and the “Windows” attribute specifies the applicable operating system. When reusing this content, DITA can intelligently filter based on these attributes, ensuring that the content is used in the right context.

3. Enhanced Translation: When content is profiled, it aids in the efficient translation of documents. Content components tagged with language attributes can be easily identified for translation, streamlining the localization process. This ensures that content can be made available to global audiences with minimum effort.