Skriftlig Info ➜ DITA publishing ➜ DITA topics ➜ DITA Glossary topic
Here is the "official" description from Oasis:
Each glossary entry <glossentry> topic defines a single sense of one term. Besides identifying the term and providing a definition, the topic accommodates basic terminology information, such as part of speech. A glossentry topic may also include acronyms and acronym expansions. Glossentry topics may be assembled by authors or processes to create glossaries for various purposes, including books, websites, or other projects.
Oasis: "Glossary entry topic", docs.oasis-open.org, [REF]
I will not go into detail here about the structure of a glossary topic, but will say that it is very specialised. The purpose is that each glossary topic shall define one word or expression. To achieve this, separate tags have been created for the expression, definition, explanation and abbreviation.
If you take on the task of creating a "glossary", you can easily place it in a bookmap, and furthermore reuse it in several different publications.
Some thoughts about this: I have on several occasions discussed with my fellow writers whether to use abbreviations in a user manual. Those who wish to use such believe that it is "easy" for the reader to look up a list at the front or back of the book where all the abbreviations are explained. I believe that almost all use of abbreviations is poor rhetorical craft. As writers we cannot assume that all our readers will intuitively understand all our abbreviations. Many of these abbreviations are to be considered "tribal language", they are well known within our own organization, but quite unknown outside. Asking a reader to scroll forward or backward in a book is simply a bad thing to do. In traditional sequential publications, it is a good rule of thumb to always explain an abbreviation the first time it is used. After this, it is "allowed" to use only the abbreviation. In DITA, we do not work sequentially. I don't know on which page the reader will open the book. If he or she starts reading on page 345, it does not help if a cryptic abbreviation is explained on page 5 or 560. The moral is: Avoid abbreviations!
Creating a new DITA topic from a template
Creating a new DITA topic by duplicating an existing topic
Inserting a topic into a topic map
Inserting a topic into a bookmap
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