Planning your content reuse

Last Updated : Nov 14, 2016 |

About this task

Successful reuse of content in DITA requires good planning and frequent communication between the owners and writers who reuse the content. Reuse planning and communication do not end when you begin content development. Some good candidates for reuse will not be obvious until after you start to create topics.

Use these steps to identify and implement content reuse during various stages of planning and content development:

Procedure

  1. Identify the content that is a candidate for reuse between deliverables or in the same deliverable.

    Reusable content can be a group of topics, a single topic, or a content element within a topic.

  2. Identify the appropriate source topics for the reusable content.

    The reuse source determines where the reusable content is maintained and which author is responsible for creating and updating the content. Source topics can be stored in a common folder or with the content for a specific deliverable.

    Ensure that the source topic title where you add reusable elements reads something like common uicontrol_SM.

  3. Implement the reuse in your topics.

    The implementation steps depend upon the type of reuse and the location of the source topics.

  4. Document how you reused content in a deliverable or across deliverables. Update the content plan and design document, if necessary, to include detailed information about how the reused content elements in each deliverable.