A couple of weeks ago, I shared a task-based DITA topic about preparing a fried egg. (Before that, I wrote about how learning DITA has been on my “learning bucket list” and how I wrote my first few DITA topics.)
With DITA, the text (what we technical communicators call “content”) has to be properly categorized according to the type of information being provided. (I already covered task info in the earlier blog post.) Another common type of DITA topic is that of reference info.
At the time of that last blog post, I gave a few caveats, one of which said the topic was focused solely on the task itself.
As I mentioned before, I knew the egg topic would involve some key ingredients and kitchen items. So, while that last blog post (and the DITA topic itself) was great, if you tried to use that task topic to actually prepare a fried egg, you would have been missing the required reference info.
Without further delay, here are 2 reference topics (associated with the original one on cooking a fried egg:
If your next thought is that the original task-based DITA topic (on cooking a fried egg) and these 2 reference-based DITA topics is causing you to click back and forth, stay tuned…my next blog post will include the end result with all 3 topics together.
Have you created any DITA topics and, if so, which type…?
Melissa Clark 