We discussed chapter 10: Content Reuse of DITA Best Practices at the August 24th meeting of the PDX DITA Book Club. Attendees included DITA enthusiasts from Jive Software, NetApp, Intel, Viewpoint, and DITA Strategies.

This chapter discussed the benefits of content reuse and single-sourcing as well as covering specifics of how you can do it with DITA. Our conversation on this chapter centered on how to think strategically about content reuse and DITA.

Conref source files
Our members have a bunch of great names for the topics that house content they plan to reuse in conrefs: master reuse files, conref libraries, warehouse topics. No matter what you call them, remember to set the processing-role attribute to resource-only and keep them in a place where you can find them easily.

Keys
Amber gave us a great overview of keys. Keys do for reuse what reltables do for links by storing information outside of topics, making it easier to find and update. Just like linking behavior is stored in reltables but resolve in topics, key values are defined in maps and resolve in topics.

Advice for content reuse
Make sure you always have a good reason why you want to reuse something. The ability to reuse is not a reason to reuse. When in doubt, don’t do it.

Start talking about content reuse strategy with your team, and keep talking about it. Amber suggested setting up brown bags where you and your team rewrite a topic together, talking about what to reuse and what not to. Josh has regular topic reviews with his team. I’m looking forward to scheduling something like it with my team soon.

Couldn’t make it to the meeting but have something to add? How does your team reuse content? Discuss in the comments!

More people are coming to every meeting! You should join us for the next PDX DITA Book Club meeting:
Where: TBD
When: September 28, 2016 from 5:00 to 6:00 pm
What: Chapter 11 of DITA Best Practices
RSVP: Email canncrochet@gmail.com