[1] It is an open standard[2] that is defined and maintained by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee.
A DITA map is a container for topics used to transform a collection of content into a publication.
A map can include relationship tables (reltables) that define hyperlinks between topics.
[8] Conditional text allows filtering or styling content based on attributes for audience, platform, product, and other properties.
[6] DITA content is created as topics, each an individual XML file.
Aids to authoring featured in specialized editors include WYSIWYG preview rendering, validation, and integration with a DITA processor, like DITA-OT or ditac.
Rules also exist for processing other rich features such as conditional text, index markers, and topic-to-topic links.
The language of the element content can be specified, as can the writing direction, the index filtering and some terms that are injected when publishing to the final format.