The History of DTA

This is a short summary of the DITA history. The detailed history can be looked up at http://dita.xml.org/book/history-of-dita.

  • In April 2004, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), formed a Technical Committee to explore a DITA Standard. The TC included XML tools vendors, consultants on Information Architecture and Content Management Systems (CMS), and end users of the DITA Document Type Definitions (DTD) and Schemas needed for the new DITA Standard.
  • In February 2005, IBM donated the Open Toolkit, a limited version of their internal Information Developers Workbench, to SourceForge. IBM continues to develop the OT, which is not a part of the OASIS DITA Standard efforts.
  • DITA 1.0 was approved as an OASIS Standard in June 2005
  • DITA 1.1 was approved in August 2007, adding a new Bookmap specialization.
  • DITA 1.2 was released in 2010. It added structured learning, creation of Learning Objects with DITA, which will be compatible with eLearning standards such as SCORM.
  • DITA 1.3 was released in 2015. It added the new troubleshooting topic, release management, scoped keys.
  • Lightweight DITA containing a very basic set of DITA elements and DITA 2.0 will be released soon making it easier for people to start with DITA.