When thinking in terms of technical writing, one might at times confuse the people involved with documenting the software with those actually writing it.

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Although the DITA standard itself does not set rules about file and folder naming, the DITA Open Toolkit has strict requirements for file and folder names. Problems with file and folder names may cause publishing to fail.

It is best to set guidelines about file and folder naming conventions before you start creating references such as <topicref>s in maps, as references include file names and folder paths.

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The DITA Open Toolkit is currently designed to automatically process a specific set of image formats. You can use images in any format with DITA, such as Visio files. However, using formats not supported by the Open Toolkit will generally require some custom development work.

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The DITA Open Toolkit can produce output in the following formats:

• PDF, through XSL-FO
• XHTML
• Microsoft Compressed HTML Help
• Eclipse Help
• Java Help
• Oracle Help
• Rich Text Format

It can also be extended to produce output in arbitrary formats.

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Getting started with DITA requires a multi-step process:

• Understand the topic-based architecture underlying the DITA model.

  Topic-based authoring is the basis of DITA. In order to understand the best approach to DITA, first understand how to work with topics and structured writing.

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