Resources for learning DITA with Oxygen

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From time to time we get requests from beginners or from users migrating from other tools who want to start using Oxygen with DITA and they need to know a set of useful resources.

Resources for editing DITA with Oxygen:

We have a getting started section in our user's manual: https://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/ug-editor/topics/eppo-first-dita-topic.html and a larger section on DITA authoring: https://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/ug-editor/topics/author-dita.html.

We have a list of videos, some of them DITA-related here: https://www.oxygenxml.com/videos.html and a series of past webinar recordings about editing DITA with Oxygen.

Getting Started with Oxygen and DITA: https://www.oxygenxml.com/events/2020/webinar_getting_started_with_dita_using_oxygen_xml_editor.html
Basic DITA Profiling and Reuse: https://www.oxygenxml.com/events/2020/webinar_working_with_dita_in_oxygen.html
Advanced DITA Profiling and Reuse: https://www.oxygenxml.com/events/2021/webinar_working_with_dita_in_oxygen_advanced_profiling_and_reuse_strategies.html
Working with DITA in Oxygen - Customizing the Editing Experience: https://www.oxygenxml.com/events/2021/webinar_working_with_dita_in_oxygen_customizing_the_editing_experience.html
Working with DITA in Oxygen - Quick start with the DITA Startup Project: https://www.oxygenxml.com/events/2021/webinar_working_with_dita_in_oxygen_startup_project.html
Working with DITA in Oxygen - Migrating to DITA and Refactoring: https://www.oxygenxml.com/events/2021/webinar_working_with_dita_in_oxygen_migrating_to_dita_and_refactoring.html
DITA XML Editing, Collaboration and Publishing Overview: https://www.oxygenxml.com/events/2024/oxygen_user_meetup_Prague.html#video_7

All these webinars above are also listed here: https://www.oxygenxml.com/working_with_dita_in_oxygen.html.

Resources for learning DITA:

If you want to start learning about DITA in general there is a web site called Learning DITA.

DITA Introduction articles by Stefan Jung.

The free Oxygen Live Tutorials add-on contains various small tutorials for learning DITA.

The DITA 1.3 standard specification can be found here: https://www.oxygenxml.com/dita/1.3/specs/#introduction/dita-release-overview.html.

There are also a number of good books like DITA For Practitioners and the DITA Style Guide.

Resources for understanding and working with DITA XML by ACM.

List of resources for learning and experimenting with DITA content by Yedda Wang

Resources for customizing the DITA output formats

Usually customizing the XHTML based outputs means creating your custom CSS selectors. If you generate WebHelp output using Oxygen, we have a section explaining basic WebHelp customizations.

For PDF-based outputs we recommend, support and maintain our CSS-based PDF publishing which is free to use from Oxygen XML Editor. There are also a number of different choices to obtain PDF from DITA: Possibilities to obtain PDF from DITA.

We have a series of past webinar recordings about customizing the published output:

Transforming DITA documents to PDF using CSS
Techniques for Customizing the WebHelp Responsive Output
Using Oxygen Styles Basket to Create CSS Customization from Scratch

And if you are interested in server side building and publishing this topic might be useful:Server Side Building and Publishing.

Courses for learning DITA with Oxygen XML Editor

Ryffine: https://www.ryffine.com/.
Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/course/technical-writing-how-to-write-using-dita-xml/.
Basic principles and theory of DITA, 10 hour recorded training course by Tony Self: https://firehead-training.net/course/dita-concepts.
Mekon: http://mekon.com/news/dita-authoring-oxygen-author/
French course by Tireme: http://dita.tireme.fr/#definition/m2_session_adapter_dita.html
"Writing DITA content" - course with a two day duration by FlowTime: https://www.flowtime.be/en/writing-dita-xml-content-schrijven.
"Empowering Structured Authoring with oXygen XML" - Metapercept provides advanced DITA-XML and oXygen XML training programs tailored for professionals seeking to deepen their expertise in structured content authoring, semantic tagging, and multichannel publishing. Their offerings include self-paced modules and instructor-led sessions with real-world, enterprise-aligned use cases. Through the DITA Authoring with oXygen XML course on Metapercept Academy, learners progress beyond the basics to master advanced concepts such as specialization, content reuse strategies, key-based linking, conditional profiling, and integration with custom DITA-OT publishing pipelines.

DITA Trivia

There are a number of blogs on which you can read various DITA-related articles:

Oxygen XML Blog: Welcome!.
Magda Caloian's Think DITA blog: http://think-dita.com/.
Scriptorium Blog: http://www.scriptorium.com/blog/.
Eliot Kimber's Blog: http://drmacros-xml-rants.blogspot.ro/.
A larger selection of technical writing and DITA articles:http://idratherbewriting.com
List of learning DITA blog posts from Mekon: http://mekon.com/bitesize-dita/
DITA XML Benefits: https://technicallywewrite.com/2023/09/11/aboutdita
Working with DITA projects in Oxygen: https://technicallywewrite.com/2023/09/14/aboutoxygen

Community

The DITA Users List is probably the first place where you can register and ask for help with DITA-related issues. A bunch of other community support forums for the publishing engine are also listed here: https://www.dita-ot.org/support.

There is also a DITA Awareness Group on Linked In.