Processing component modularization and naming conventions

Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Version 1.2

Document
Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Version 1.2

Files that implement processing associated with specific vocabulary or constraint modules should generally be organized by module, such that the implementation components correspond to the vocabulary modules that they implement and are, to the degree the implementation technology provides for it, similarly modular.

For example, the DITA Open Toolkit provides a general plugin mechanism that allows implementation components to be dynamically added to and removed from a Toolkit instance. General practice is to define Toolkit plugins that correspond to modules.

For the specific case of cascading style sheets and XSLTs transformations, two key DITA implementation technologies, the suggested filenaming conventions are:

CSS override files (recommended convention for tool providers)
  • typename.css
  • customization-purpose.css
XSLT override files (recommended convention for tool providers)
  • typename.xsl
  • customization-purpose.xsl