How are review comments and feedback managed within DITA for IT content?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

Managing review comments and feedback within DITA for IT content is essential for maintaining the quality and accuracy of technical documentation. DITA, or Darwin Information Typing Architecture, is an XML-based standard designed for creating and managing structured content. It offers several mechanisms to handle review comments and feedback effectively, ensuring that the documentation is continually improved and refined.

DITA supports conditional processing, which allows authors to include or exclude specific content based on conditions. Authors can use this feature to mark content with review statuses, such as “draft,” “reviewed,” or “approved.” Review comments can be added as elements within the DITA content, indicating issues, suggestions, or feedback. When the content undergoes review, reviewers can use the conditional processing attributes to flag sections that require attention. This enables a clear and structured way of identifying and addressing review comments within the DITA content.

Example:

Here is an HTML-friendly example of how review comments and feedback can be managed within DITA:


<topic id="topic1" audience="reviewer">
  <title>Review Comment Example</title>
  <body>
    <p>This is some content that requires review.</p>
    <note audience="reviewer" status="draft">
      <p>This paragraph needs improvement.</p>
    </note>
    <p>Another section that needs review.</p>
    <note audience="reviewer" status="needs-feedback">
      <p>This section requires clarification.</p>
    </note>
  </body>
</topic>

In this example, the DITA topic includes review comments represented as “note” elements. Each “note” element has an “audience” attribute specifying the reviewer and a “status” attribute indicating the review status. Reviewers can easily locate these sections and provide feedback, making it a structured and efficient way to manage review comments within DITA for IT content.