Conditional processing attributes


OASIS DITA Technical Committee


Metadata attributes typically are used for the following purposes:

  • Filtering content based on the attribute values, for example, to suppress or publish profiled content
  • Flagging content based on the attribute values, for example, to highlight specific content on output
  • Performing custom processing, for example, to extract business-critical data and store it in a database

Typically audience, platform, product, otherprops, props, deliveryTarget, and specializations of the props attributes are used for filtering; the same attributes plus the rev attribute are used for flagging. The status and importance attributes, as well as custom attributes specialized from base, are used for application-specific behavior, such as identifying metadata to aid in search and retrieval.

Filtering and flagging attributes

The following conditional-processing attributes are available on most elements:

The product that is the subject of the discussion.
The platform on which the product is deployed.
The intended audience of the content.

The deliveryTarget attribute is specialized from the props attribute. It is defined in the deliveryTargetAttDomain, which is integrated into all OASIS-provided document-type shells. If this domain is not integrated into a given document-type shell, the deliveryTarget attribute will not be available.

Other properties that do not require semantic identification.

Other metadata attributes


Provides a label on one or more element instances, typically to specify a role or other semantic distinction. As the outputclass attribute does not provide a formal type declaration or the structural consistency of specialization, it should be used sparingly, usually only as a temporary measure while a specialization is developed. For example, uicontrol elements that define button labels could be distinguished by adding an outputclass attribute: