This document presents best practices for managing deliverable-specific link anchors in DITA, emphasizing the use of keys for navigation and resource references. It outlines the importance of defining unique keys for each resource to ensure reliable linkability and persistent identification across different document versions. The guidelines aim to enhance the functionality of cross-references and facilitate the generation of public anchors in various output formats.

1. Managing Deliverable-Specific Link Anchors:
New Suggested Best Practice for Keys
How to define and maintain publicly-
linkable anchors in deliverables
produced from DITA source
4/29/2015 Contrext, LLC 1
Eliot Kimber
Contrext, LLC
DITA North America 2015

2. About the Author
• Independent consultant focusing on DITA analysis,
design, and implementation
• Doing SGML and XML for cough 30 years cough
• Founding member of the DITA Technical Committee
• Founding member of the XML Working Group
• Co-editor of HyTime standard (ISO/IEC 10744)
• Primary developer and founder of the DITA for
Publishers project
• Author of DITA for Practitioners, Vol 1 (XML Press)
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3. Agenda
• What are "public anchors"?
• Navigation vs resource keys
• Key definition and usage best practice
• Generating public deliverable anchors
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4. Executive Summary
• Use keys for everything
• Principle: Exactly one URI reference to each
resource across all maps
• Put unique keys on each navigation topicref
you want to be publicly linkable or xref to
• Use navigation keys to determine deliverable
anchors
• Don’t change navigation keys unnecessarily
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5. What are Public Anchors?
• Anything that can be linked to from outside the
deliverable:
– HTML files
– HTML @id values
– PDF named destinations
– Help topic IDs
• Need to be reliably persistent
• Should not change from release to release for the
same logical component (topic or element)
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6. Navigation vs Resource keys
• Two types of topicrefs:
– "normal": contribute to the navigation tree or to
reltables
– "resource-only": Establish a dependency on a
resource but don’t put it in the navigation tree
• @processing-role on topicref:
– processing-role="normal"
– processing-role="resource-only"
• <keydef> is resource-only by default
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7. Resource-Only Keys
• Establish context-independent keys for topics
• Can be unique across all maps if required or
map- or scope-specific
• Key-defining maps serve as catalogs of topics
or other resources (images, etc.)
• Should be used for conrefs
• Not useful for cross reference targets: no
navigation use context
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8. Normal-Role (Navigation) Key
• Identifies the unique uses of a given topic
• Only appropriate target for cross references
• By the nature of keys, are globally unique
within a single root map.
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9. Key Definition and Usage Best
Practice
• Define resource-only keys in standalone "key-
definition" maps
<keydef keys="topic-000123r5"
href="topics/t-57623-934.dita"/>
• Use resource-only keys from navigation topicrefs:
<chapter keys="chap-01"
keyref="topic-000123r5"/>
• Put keys on either all navigation topicrefs or
• Put keys on all navigation topicrefs you want to
be publicly linkable
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10. Exactly One URI Reference For
Each Resource
• For images and external Web resources:
– Always define a key
– Refer to the key (and only the key) from topics
• For topics that are or are likely to be reused:
– Define resource-only keys in a separate key-
defining map
• For topics that are only ever used in a single
map:
– Put @keys on the topicref to the topic
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11. Keys for Single-Use Topics
• A topic used only once across all maps may not justify the
cost of separate resource-only key definition
• Define two keys on the topicref:
– One that reflects that use of the topic: "ch-01-ss-01"
– One that represents the topic in any context: "topic-1235"
• Example:
<topicref
keys="installation topic-1234"
href="topics/topic-1234.dita"
/>
• If the topic is ever reused, create resource-only topicref
and move context-independent key to that definition
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12. NOTE: DITA OT Limitation
• As of OT 2.1 and earlier:
– @copy-to on navigation topicrefs that use keyref doesn't
work
– Copy-to processing is done before key space construction
• Fixing this will require rethinking entire preprocessing
approach
– Rethink required for DITA 1.3 anyway
– Non-trivial to implement
• Workaround: Use separate keydefs for each required copy-to:
<keydef keys="key-01"
href="topic-01.dita"/>
<keydef keys="key-01-copy-to-c01s01"
href="topic-01.dita"
copy-to="ch01-sec01.dita"/>
…
<topicref keys="ch01-sec01" keyref="key-01-copy-to-c01s01"/>
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13. Example: Publication root map
<map>
<title>Prod1 Product Guide</title>
<mapref href="keysdefs-01.ditamap"/>
<topicref keys="pubroot"
keyref="topic-ABC001"
>
<topicref keys="chapter-01"
keyref="topic-ABC123"
>
<topicref keys="ch01-overview"
keyref="topic-ABC456"
>
</topicref>
…
</topicref>
…
</map>
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14. Example: keydefs-01.ditamap
<map>
<title>Keydefs for Group 1</title>
<keydef keys="topic-ABC001"
href="topic-ABC001.dita"
/>
<keydef keys="topic-ABC002"
href="topic-ABC002.dita"
/>
…
</map>
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15. Cross Reference Example
<p>See <xref keyref="chapter-01"/>…
<p>See <xref keyref="chapter-01/fig-01"/>
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16. Generating Public Deliverable
Anchors
• Two basic use cases:
– Multi-file outputs (HTML, online help)
– Monolithic outputs (PDF, EPUB, etc.)
• General problem: anchors for non-topic
elements
– Only unique within a single topic
– Not necessarily unique within result documents
• Must combine keys with element IDs in some
cases
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17. Multi-File Outputs (HTML)
• Use navigation keys to determine result
filenames:
<topicref keys="chapter-01"
keyref="topic-ABC123"
>
becomes
chapter-01.html
• Use navigation key plus element ID to
construct in-document anchors
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18. Monolithic Outputs (PDF)
• Use navigation key for topic anchors
• Use navigation key+element ID for non-topic
anchors
• For PDF, need to use a separator that uses
legal URL characters, e.g. "_._", "-.-"
– Needs to be more than "-" or "_" to avoid
accidental collisions
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19. Preprocessing Extensions
• DITA Community project
• Extends base preprocessing to add @copy-to
to topicrefs as required
– Second and subsequent reference to a given topic
– Will eventually use keys for the filename value
• Some subtle complexities
• Haven't had time to implement yet
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20. Summary
• Always use keys for all references
– To topics
– To images
– To peer maps (DITA 1.3)
• Put keys on navigation topicrefs
• Crossrefs should point to navigation keys
• Use navigation keys to generate anchors in
deliverables
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21. Resources
• Paper: http://github.io/dita-
community/paper-dita-keys-as-public-anchor-
ids
• Preprocessing extensions:
https://github.com/dita-community/org.dita-
community.preprocess-extensions
• Me: ekimber@contrext.com,
http://contrext.com
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