DITA vs. DocBook If you line DocBook and DITA up, I think DITA can point to four technical differences that are arguably features in its favor: 1. A topic-oriented authoring paradigm. 2. A cross-referencing scheme that's more practical than XML's flat ID space. 3. SGML's conref, reinvented. 4. An extensibility model based on “specialization”. Well, heck, if that's all DITA has going for it, DocBook can do those things in Software > Text > DocBookwith ditadocbook