DTD: Overview of coding requirements

DITA coding practices for DTDs rely heavily on entities to implement specialization and ►constraints◄. As such, an understanding of entities is critical when working with DTD document-type shells, vocabulary modules, or constraint modules.

Entities can be defined multiple times within a single document type, but only the first definition is effective. How entities work shapes DTD coding practices. The following list describes a few of the more important entities that are used in DITA DTDs:

Elements defined as entities

In DITA DTDs, every element is defined as an entity. When elements are added to a content model, they are added using the entity. This enables extension with domain specializations. For example, the entity %ph; usually just means "the ph element", but can be (pre)defined in a document-type shell to mean "ph plus several elements from the highlighting domain". Because the document-type shell places that entity definition before the usual definition, every element that included %ph; in its content model now includes <ph> plus every phrase specialization in the highlighting domain.

Content models defined as entities

Every element in a DITA DTD defines its content model using an entity. For example, rather than directly setting what is allowed in <ph>, that element sets its content model to %ph.content;; that entity defines the actual content model. This is done to enable constraints; a constraint module can (pre)define the %ph.content; model to remove selected elements.

Attribute sets defined as entities

Every element in a DITA DTD defines its attribute using an entity. For example, rather than directly defining attributes for <ph>, that element sets its attributes using the %ph.attributes; entity; that entity defines the actual attributes. As above, this is done to enable constraints; a constraint module can (pre)define the %ph.attributes; model to remove selected attributes.