A page, not a tree
Paragraphs, lists, tables, notes and figures render as themselves. Enter, Backspace and Tab do what a writer expects.
Public beta · New in 0.7.0: View as, large documentation sets, links between publications
Write DITA like a document.
Visual DITA is a visual DITA editor for VS Code. It opens your topics as a page you type on and your maps as an outline — not as XML you edit by hand. The structure stays DITA: valid, yours, and unchanged down to every byte you did not touch.
Free for standard DITA · No account · Nothing leaves your machine · Other ways to install
DITA 1.0 – 1.3built in
DITA 2.0draft, one click away
Your specializationsas a signed package
Oxygen-compatiblecomments and tracked changes
Losslessonly what you edit is rewritten
See it in action
Watch it work.
Short videos, captions on screen, recorded with Visual DITA 0.6.0 from the Marketplace.
Features
Everything a DITA project uses. None of the angle brackets.
Subject-matter experts get a word processor. Information architects get the XML they asked for.
Only what your grammar allows
Menus, styles and completion follow the document type of the file you opened — your specializations included.
Review, compatible with Oxygen
Comments and tracked changes in Oxygen's own markup: reviewed here, intact there — and the other way round.
Find anything
DITA Search reads your topics as a reader does, not the markup: every place named for what it is, kept to one map if you like, typos forgiven.
Links that follow a rename
Rename or move a topic, rename a key, split a topic or put it back: the maps, links and conrefs follow, shown before anything is written.
Word documents in
A Word manual becomes a map and its topics, chapters numbered, procedures as tasks. Or paste from Word, and it comes in as DITA.
Checked as you type
The grammar, authoring rules, your glossary's terms and your own Schematron rules with their fixes — on the page and in the Problems panel.
Publish to web pages or PDF
HTML5 or PDF with the DITA-OT on your computer, looking the way your topics do on the page, with your DITAVAL conditions.
Compare with Git
Any version or branch, on your own page or side by side, scrolling together. Words, rows, formatting and attributes marked.
Maps as an outline
Drag, indent, add topics, headings and keys, edit relationship tables in place. Bookmaps too, with their metadata.
Reuse, keys and conditions
conref and conkeyref shown resolved, key scopes, subject schemes, and View as: a page as a given audience reads it, through a condition set or the values you pick, still editable.
Tools for your AI assistant
An MCP server that answers from your vocabulary, keys and templates, and searches as DITA Search does — so an agent writes your DITA, not generic DITA.
Large documentation sets
Hundreds of publications that refer to each other as peers: keys from the map you have open, links between publications resolved as you write, Where used across them, and a set of 70,000 files opened in seconds.
Search
Find anything, the way your readers read it.
DITA Search searches your topics as a reader reads them, not their markup: as you type, every place said for what it is — a step, a table cell, a short description — and a click away.
- Kept to the map you are working on, or the whole project
- A typo searched as the word your project uses
- Where a topic or key is used, from the same index
Word
Word documents in, DITA out.
Convert a Word manual into a map and its topics, or paste part of one on a page: headings, lists, tables, notes, footnotes, images and equations come across as DITA, not as formatting.
- Topics where you choose: each Heading 1, or every heading
- Numbered chapters numbered by the map, procedures as tasks
- What did not come across said, to read through on the page
Review
Review with the markup your team already uses.
Comments with replies, tracked insertions and deletions, colour highlights: stored in the topic exactly as Oxygen XML writes them, so reviews move freely between the two.
- Reply, resolve, accept and reject from the Review pane
- No markup reads the topic as if every change were accepted
- Teams that review through Git can switch tracking off
Compare
See exactly what changed — as pages, not as XML.
Compare a topic with the last commit, any earlier version or another branch. Your own page marks the changes, or the two versions sit side by side and scroll together.
- Changed words, paragraphs, table rows and cells
- Formatting and attribute changes too
- Diffs from Source Control read the same way
Maps
Maps you can see, and arrange by hand.
A map opens as its outline, titles resolved from the topics and keys. Drag rows, open a topic beside the map, set keys and scopes at the foot of the page.
- Topics, headings, key definitions and submaps
- Relationship tables edited in place
- Map and book metadata in the Topic pane
Checks
Valid as you type. Nothing else to install.
Every document is checked against its own document type — elements, their order, attributes and values — against authoring rules that catch what a grammar cannot, and against your team's own: the words your glossary says not to use, and your Schematron rules.
- Each problem shown on the element it belongs to
- Your rules' fixes (Schematron QuickFix) a right-click away
- The same list in VS Code's Problems panel, for the whole project
- No Java, no XML extension, no server
Publish
Published the way it looks on the page.
Publish a map, or a topic alone, as HTML5 or PDF with the DITA-OT on your computer, in Visual DITA's look: the map's contents beside every page, titles, notes, tables and steps as you wrote them.
- With the conditions of your DITAVAL files
- Kept in the project as DITA-OT's own project file, for a server to publish the same
- Your own DITA-OT project files published as they are
Document types
Every DITA version. And yours.
The editor is driven by the document type of the file you open, named by its DOCTYPE or, for RELAX NG, its
<?xml-model?>. A DOCTYPE that names a version always gets it; the rest open on your project's version.
DITA 1.0DITA 1.1DITA 1.2DITA 1.3DITA 2.0 draft
Standard DITA, built in
The OASIS document types of DITA 1.0 to 1.3 — topic, concept, task, reference, glossary, map, bookmap, learning, machinery task, troubleshooting and the rest. Nothing to install, nothing to configure.
DITA 2.0, ready when you are
The OASIS 2.0 draft is built in too. Load it for a project and documents that name DITA 2.0 open on it; your 1.x documents never notice.
Your specializations
Specializations and constraints, written as DTDs or as RELAX NG, come as a Visual DITA package: one signed file, prepared by Pleosoft from your document types, imported once and shared with the whole project.
Free & licensed
Free for standard DITA. Licensed for your own.
The free edition has no trial period, no seat limit, and holds no feature back. What you license is support for your organization's own document types.
Standard DITA
Free
Every feature, on the OASIS document types of every DITA version.
- The page editor, maps, tables and review
- Search, Word import and publishing
- Git comparisons, checks and the AI tools
- Any number of computers, any use — commercial authoring included
Your document types
Licensed
Your specializations and constraints, in a signed Visual DITA package in your organization's name.
- The page, the menus and the checks follow your grammar exactly
- One file in the project: everyone who opens it has your elements
- Your XML is never locked in — it stays plain DITA
- 1
Tell us about your document types
Your DITA framework: its DTDs or RELAX NG and its catalog, as your team uses them.
- 2
We prepare your package
Compiled from your document types and signed in your organization's name.
- 3
Import it once
It lives in your project's
.ditafolder and travels with it through Git.
Built for DITA teams
Your files are the source of truth.
Lossless
Indentation, comments, processing instructions, entities and attribute order survive untouched. A diff shows your edit and nothing else.
Private
Visual DITA collects nothing and sends nothing anywhere. No account, no server, no telemetry of its own.
Oxygen-friendly
Review markup, Author CSS and framework templates from Oxygen work as they are. Mixed teams keep working.
Open to the XML
Open Source shows the XML at any time; edits there flow back into the page. Nothing is hidden from you.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
What is DITA?
DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture, is an OASIS XML standard for technical documentation: content written as reusable topics — concepts, tasks, references — assembled into publications by maps, and published to HTML, PDF and more. Visual DITA is an editor for it: you write DITA without editing the XML by hand.
Is Visual DITA free?
Yes, for standard DITA: every feature, on any number of computers, for any use, commercial authoring included. Your organization's own document types — specializations and constraints — need a licence.
Standard DITA renews every year, free: an update or a download, from October. Your files stay plain DITA whatever happens.
Will it change my XML?
Only the elements you edit are rewritten. Everything else — indentation, comments, processing instructions, entity references, attribute order — is written back byte for byte.
Which DITA versions does it support?
DITA 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 are built in, and so is the DITA 2.0 draft, which a project loads when it wants it. A document opens on the version its DOCTYPE names, and one that names none on the project's version.
What about our own specialization?
It is supported fully, written as DTDs or as RELAX NG, through a Visual DITA package from Pleosoft. Until you have one, those documents still open: the standard content is on the page, and your own elements are kept unchanged and shown as tags.
Can we keep using Oxygen XML?
Yes. Comments and tracked changes use Oxygen's own markup, and your framework's Author CSS and templates apply. A topic reviewed in one opens with its review intact in the other.
Does anything leave my machine?
No. Visual DITA reads and writes the files in your workspace, the folders your settings point at and its own folder in your home directory — nothing else, and it sends nothing anywhere. It needs no account and no server.
What do I need?
VS Code 1.106 or newer, or an editor built on it: Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium. No Java, no XML extension. Git — VS Code's built-in support — for comparisons. Install covers the Marketplace, Open VSX, and computers without either.
To publish, the DITA-OT, version 4 or later, and the Java it runs on, on your computer: both free, installed once.
Can it publish?
Yes: a map, or a topic alone, as HTML5 or PDF with the DITA-OT on your computer, in Visual DITA's look and with the conditions of your DITAVAL files, or as any other output your DITA-OT has. A project already set up for DITA-OT is published as its own project files say.
Is it finished?
It is a public beta: everything described here works today and is covered by tests, but the product is young. Keep your content in version control, and tell us what breaks.
Talk to us.
About your document types, a licence, or anything else. No form: an email reaches a person, and we answer.