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DITA 2.0 Specification Support Cheat Sheet

Radu Coravu
9 Mar 2022
Read time: 5 minute(s)

You can use the Convert DITA 1.3 topics and maps to the DITA 2.0 standard XML refactoring action bundled with Oxygen 24 (or later) to convert DITA 1.3 content to the DITA 2.0 standard. The same XML refactoring action is also available as a separate GitHub project: https://github.com/oxygenxml/dita_1_3_to_2_x_converter.

The DITA Open Toolkit publishing engine will support publishing a mix of DITA 1.3 and 2.0 topics and maps. The list of supported DITA 2.0 features in the publishing engine is available here: https://www.dita-ot.org/dev/reference/dita-v2-0-support.html.

Table 1. DITA 2.0 Support Cheat Sheet
Change Details Handled By Conversion Supported in DITA OT Publishing Engine
The DITA 2.0 topics/maps have specific schema references. References to DTD/XML Schema/RNG schemas need to be changed in all topics and maps. Yes Yes
Removed elements: 
titlealts, itemgroup, topicset, topicsetref, 
longquoteref, anchor, anchorref, hasInstance, 
hasKind, hasNarrower, hasPart, 
hasRelated, relatedSubjects, subjectRelTable, 
subjectRelHeader, subjectRel, subjectRole
Removed some seldom used elements. Yes, automatically removes the elements and shows messages for each removed element. -
Removed attributes: 
@mapkeyref, link/@query, hazardsymbol/@longdescref, 
@xtrf, @xtrc,
@spectitle,@specentry
 Removed some seldom used attributes. Yes, automatically removes the attributes and shows messages for each removed attribute. -
Removal of @navtitle/@locktitle/@lockmeta attributes Removed deprecated attributes, they can be replaced with equivalents. Yes, automatically converts them to <topicmeta> equivalents. Yes
Removal of @domains default attribute. This is a default attribute that does not appear in the topic and map instances. It was used mostly for defining new attribute specializations, and all attribute specialization schemas need to be re-written to use the new @specializations default attribute. - Yes

Removal of @copy-to attribute

 Needs to be replaced with a <resourceid> element. Yes No
Removal of the @print attribute Needs to be replaced with the @deliveryTarget attribute. Yes -
Removed <substep> and <substeps> task elements Needs to be replaced with the <steps> and <step> elements. Yes No
Removed <sectiondiv> element. Needs to be replaced with the <div> element. Yes -
Added new <audio> and <video> elements. New elements were added to refer to multimedia audio and video content and to define parameters. - Partially
Added new <em> and <strong> elements New elements similar in style to <b> and <i> but with more semantics. - No
Added new <partno>, <hwcontrol>. New elements for documenting hardware. - No
Added new <diagnostics>, <diagnostics-general>, <diagnostics-steps> elements. New elements added to the troubleshooting topic type. - -
Added new <include> element. Similar to <coderef>. - Yes
Titles, cell and row span attributes for <simpletable> elements. Simple tables can have titles and their cells can span rows and columns. - Yes
Style output using ditaval @outputclass attribute. Profiling attributes defined on DITA elements can be converted to custom @class attribute values in the generated HTML output by adding specific @outputclass attributes on the filters in the ditaval filter file. - Yes
Added new <keytext> element. Used to simplify syntax for defining a key pointing to a small text fragment. - No
New Bookmap <mapresources> element. A wrapper for various elements like <keydef>, <ditavalref> which could not be used on the first level of the DITA Book Map.