What challenges can arise when ensuring consistent branding and styling across various DITA-based IT documents?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

Ensuring consistent branding and styling across various DITA-based IT documents can be a challenging task. DITA’s modular and topic-based approach to content creation, while highly efficient for reuse and consistency, can introduce complexities when trying to maintain a uniform appearance. Here are some challenges that can arise:

Fragmented Styling:

DITA documents are often divided into smaller topics, each with its own markup. This modular approach can lead to fragmented styling, making it difficult to achieve a cohesive and consistent look and feel across all documents. Differences in headings, fonts, and other styling elements may emerge between topics, resulting in an inconsistent user experience.

Customization Complexity:

Customizing the styling of DITA documents requires expertise in DITA’s customization mechanisms, such as creating custom DITA-OT plugins or specialization. This complexity can be a barrier for organizations aiming to enforce specific branding and styling guidelines, especially for IT departments with limited expertise in DITA customization.

Responsive Design:

With the need for responsive and mobile-friendly IT documentation, adapting the styling to various screen sizes and devices adds another layer of complexity. It’s essential to ensure that branding and styling remain consistent while accommodating different display formats.

Example:

Here’s an example of how challenges related to consistent branding and styling can manifest in DITA:


<topic id="it-document-1">
  <title>Getting Started with Software A</title>
  <body>
    <p>This is an introduction to Software A.</p>
    <note important="yes">Please refer to the installation guide for detailed instructions.</note>
  </body>
</topic>

<topic id="it-document-2">
  <title>Using Software B</title>
  <body>
    <p>Software B is a versatile tool.</p>
    <note important="1">For technical support, visit our website.</note>
  </body>
</topic>

In this example, topics “it-document-1” and “it-document-2” have different styling for notes. The “important” attribute is used inconsistently, leading to a lack of visual uniformity.