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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/37928
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm trying to understand the **technical** difference between DITA and S1000D.

Yes, I know, the common wisdom is that if you need documentation for helicopter or submarine, you should use S1000D, and if you need documentation for software, you should use DITA. While this is true, it is too shallow level of understanding.

With a lot of searching I found some articles about technical side of this difference, but still, it's completely unclear for me, probably because I never worked with DITA or S1000D before.

- From [Slideshare presentation](https://www.slideshare.net/JosephStorbeck/dita-and-s1000-d-two-paths-to-structured-documentation-no-animations) (slide 24):

- From [one article](http://www.ditawriter.com/book-excerpt-dita-and-other-structured-xml-formats/), which in turn an excerpt from the book:

- From [another article](https://web.archive.org/web/20130729055447/http://www.dclab.com/S1000D_DITA.asp):

- Also, in [one another article](https://www.pdsvision.se/blog/xml-dita-docbook-s1000d-shipdex-confused/) it is clearly stated that DITA and S1000D are assuming completely different **types** of authoring. DITA is topic-based, while S1000D is module-based:

So, what is the **techinical** difference between DITA and S1000D? How DITA's topic-based approach differs from S1000D's module-based approach? Does it all mean that S1000D is not so flexible in content reuse as DITA (see second quote in my post), and how exactly this unflexibility looks, in comparison with DITA?

Original score: 8