DITA Bootstrap Specialization

A plug-in for DITA Open Toolkit that provides the core DTD specializations for the DITA Bootstrap plug-ins.

Installing

This plug-in is typically installed as a dependency of the main org.dita-bootstrap.html or org.dita-bootstrap.pdf plug-ins. Use the dita command to add it to your DITA Open Toolkit installation:

dita install fox.jason.extend.css
dita install org.dita-bootstrap.specialization
dita install org.dita-bootstrap.html
dita install org.dita-bootstrap.pdf

Featured Bootstrap components

The plug-in includes DTD handling for the following DITA Bootstrap components:

• Accordions (<accordion>)
• Alerts (<alert>)
• Badges (<badge>)
• Buttons (<button>)
• Button Groups (<button-group>)
• Cards (<card>)
• Carousels (<carousel>)
• Icons (<icon>)
• Grid layout (<grid-row>, <grid-col>)
• List groups (<list-group>)
• Offcanvas (<offcanvas>)
• Pagination (<pagination>)
• Popovers (<popover>)
• Tabs (<tabbed-dialog>)
• Thumbnails (<thumbnail>)
• Tooltips (<tooltip>)

Using Bootstrap Specializations

The preferred way to use these specializations is via the DITA Bootstrap DTD. These provide native DITA elements with specialized attributes for Bootstrap styling:

<card color="primary" border="1" rounded="yes">
  <title>Card Title</title>
  <p>Card content goes here.</p>
</card>

Colors and Borders

Most DITA Bootstrap Specializations, as well as many base DITA elements, support common attributes to control their appearance:

• Color Themes: Use standard Bootstrap themes such as primary, secondary, success, danger, warning, info, light, and dark.
• Border Thickness: Use numeric values from 1 to 5 to control border width.
• Rounded Corners: Use values like yes, no, pill, or circle.

License

Apache 2.0 © 2026 Jason Fox

Within the sample documentation, where necessary, the texts describing the usage of each component have been copied directly from the official Bootstrap 5.3 documentation, however DITA markup is used throughout the examples describing how to implement these components correctly using DITA specializations or outputclass. The text is therefore a derivative of "Bootstrap 5.3 docs" by Twitter, Inc. and the Bootstrap Authors, and used under CC BY 3.0.