Working with Content References

The DITA conref feature (short for content reference) lets you include a piece of source content by reference in other topics. When you need to update that content, you do it in only one place. Typical uses of content references are for product names, warnings, definitions, or process steps.

You can use either or both of the following strategies for managing content references:

• Reusable components - With this strategy, you create a new file for each piece of content that you want to reuse.
• Arbitrary content references - You may prefer to keep many pieces of reusable content in one file. For example, you might want one file to consist of a list of product names, with each product name in a phrase (<ph> element) within the file. Then, wherever you need to display a product name, you can insert a content reference that points to the appropriate <ph> element in this file.
  Note: A reference displays tracked changes and also comments of the source fragment. To edit these comments or accept/reject the changes, right click them and select Edit Reference.

  This strategy requires more setup than reusable components, but makes easier centrally managing the reused content.

Oxygen XML Editor creates a reference to the external content by adding a conref attribute to an element in the local document. The conref attribute defines a link to the referenced content, made up of a path to the file and the topic ID within the file. The path may also reference a specific element ID within the topic. Referenced content is not physically copied to the referencing file, but Oxygen XML Editor displays it as if it is there in the referencing file. You can also choose to view local content instead of referenced content, to edit the attributes or contents of the referencing element.