# DITA Best Practices : New to oXygen and DITA?

Created by Kelly Mankenberg, last modified on Mar 24, 2017

If you are new to the oXygen tool and DITA authoring within WKFS InfoDev, this page is for you!

## What is oXygen?

oXygen is our XML editor and authoring tool, which uses the DITA Open Toolkit.

## What is DITA?

DITA, or Darwin Information Type Archictecture, is an XML data model for authoring with the DITA Open Toolkit for publishing. The DITA Open Toolkit is an open-source publishing system for DITA; it can produce the following outputs:

- JavaHelp
- Microsoft Compiled HTML Help
- DocBook
- Eclipse Help
- PDF
- XHTML
- Word RTF

According to dita.xml.org, "At its most basic level, DITA is an XML document markup language; but even at its simplest level, DITA enforces a topic structure and reuse architecture that allows DITA documents to reuse content from other, more structured projects. This standardization also sets the stage for topic-level reuse by others as an initial migration of document-oriented content evolves to incorporate better management and authoring practices around topics and maps."

## Information Types

A fundamental principle of DITA is information typing, which categorizes information according to the nature of the content. The three base DITA information types are concept, task and reference. The concept, task, and reference base types are sometimes called core information types, as they are considered to be universally relevant. Select any of the following information types for a detailed synopsis and example:

- Concepts
- Tasks
- References

The Using oXygen space provides more information on creating concepts, tasks, and references in greater detail. See Creating new topics (information types) for more information.

## Getting Started

Here you will find links to topics designed to help you get up and running quickly

Section | Area | Topic
--- | --- | ---
Setup | Setting Up Oxygen | Importing Transformation Scenarios into oXygen
Using | Authoring in Oxygen | Using oXygen
Publishing | Transforming Content | Publishing from oXygen
Publishing | Delivering Content | Uploading Content to Help Web Server
Troubleshooting |  | Troubleshooting oXygen

## For more information

See the following:

http://www.oxygenxml.com/dita/styleguide/webhelp-feedback/Artefact/Topics_and_Information_Types/c_Information_Types_Explained.html.

http://dita.xml.org/wiki/level-one-topics