Principles of Single Sourcing and Reuse Methods in modern DITA Writing

In today’s world of content management, the most effective strategy is single-sourcing, also known as multi-channel publishing. This approach transforms digital or traditional content into intelligent content and publishes it in multiple output formats. Smart content and managing systems are made dynamic and perfectly suited for effective localization.

The key to the success of single sourcing is reusability. This ability of platforms to create and store content for efficient reuse practices empowers writers and organizations to create, publish, and manage their content better than ever.

Principles of single sourcing

Single sourcing is based on several principles that make it successful:

• DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) – Always try to reuse content or find reuse possibilities and solutions.
• KISS (Keep It Simple and Straight) – Always try to reuse content, but avoid complex structures.
• Principle of least knowledge (standalone) – The topics should not create dependencies with other topics and should be standalone.
• The Single Responsibility – Topics must serve one purpose. Do not combine different topics into one. This helps reduce the size of topics, make them stand-alone, and increases the possibilities of reuse.
• Abstraction and Generalization principle – To make the content reusable, practice writing as generic as possible. Remember, generic, doesn’t mean ambiguous.

Practical scenarios

• Before developing any new topic, always check for existing topics for reuse.
• Consider segregating the reusable content and document-specific in your CMS or CCMS.
• Ensure writing content as generic as possible but without ambiguity.
• Avoid using links or contextual references wherever possible to make the content independent.
• Avoid using references such as “previous” or “next” topic/chapter/page, etc.
• Try to have a topic with only one or two topic types.

Reuse Methods

The various reuse methods in single source XML writing are all useful for reuse, but should be applied in different situations.

• Topic or Component reuse – This is the reuse of topics or components as complete building blocks (commonly compared to Lego blocks) to form your document project tree. Using this method means building unique projects. This method allows reusability in two forms,
  • Content Reuse: Reuses the content, but not the structure
  • Structure Reuse: Reuses both the content and the structure

• Fragment reuse – Fragments are chunks of content that are smaller than a complete topic or component and can be parts of such a topic. They can be embedded within a topic.

• Conditional reuse – This means applying specific conditions of applicability to content (topic level or document level) and using the same content for multiple deliverables by applying tags with metadata and then filtering it during publishing.

• Variables reuse – Variables are placeholders for a single word or phrase, defined by tags with metadata. By defining them differently in different contexts, the topic or component in which they are used becomes more widely reusable.

In conclusion, by following the principles of single sourcing and implementing the right reuse methods, content creators can efficiently create, publish, and manage their content, while reducing costs and increasing consistency. These strategies are essential for modern DITA writing and can help content creators reach their online target audience more effectively.