Are there strategies for efficiently updating shared content across multiple mining documents and safety procedures?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

Efficiently updating shared content across multiple mining documents and safety procedures is essential for maintaining accuracy and consistency in documentation. DITA XML offers strategies to streamline the process, ensuring that changes made to shared content are propagated consistently across all relevant documents.

Content Reuse

DITA’s content reuse capabilities are instrumental in efficiently updating shared content. Organizations can create a single source of truth for common content elements, such as safety guidelines or equipment specifications. These reusable components can then be referenced in multiple documents. When an update is required, modifying the source content automatically reflects the changes in all documents referencing it. This approach minimizes the risk of inconsistencies and reduces the effort needed to update shared information.

Conditional Text

Conditional text in DITA allows organizations to include or exclude content based on specific conditions. When updates are needed for content that applies to specific scenarios or contexts, authors can make changes within conditional sections. By adjusting the conditions, the updated content is included or excluded in the generated documents as necessary. For instance, if a safety procedure varies for different mining equipment models, conditional text ensures that the correct procedure is included for each equipment type while maintaining a single source for the procedure itself.

Example:

Here’s an example of how content reuse and conditional text work together in DITA XML:


<topic id="safety_guidelines">
  <title>Safety Guidelines</title>
  <body>
    <section id="general-safety">
      <title>General Safety</title>
      <p>General safety guidelines for mining operations.</p>
    </section>
    <section id="equipment-specific-safety" conref="shared/equipment-safety.dita"/>
  </body>

In this example, the “safety_guidelines” topic includes a section for general safety guidelines and references an external content file (“equipment-safety.dita”) using conref (content reference). The referenced content file contains equipment-specific safety guidelines. When changes are made to the shared equipment safety content, they are automatically reflected in all documents referencing it, ensuring consistency and efficiency.