Content Reuse Tips and Tricks

I tried to compile below a set of best practices to follow when reusing content:

• Keep all your reused content in special topics located in special folders. Technical writers need to know that they are editing content which potentially is used in multiple contexts.
• Keep a description for each reused element. You can have topics which act like dictionaries of reused content. A table of reused content can have two columns. On the first column each cell contains the reused element and on the second one you can have a small description for each reused element. The description acts as metadata, it may give the technical writer more details about how that content should be reused.
• Use conkeyrefs instead of conrefs. Because relative referenced paths used in conrefs always break when you move topics around. But more about conkeyrefs in the next section.
• When using conkeyrefs you should create a special map with key definitions. This keeps the reused content and the keys for it separate from the live content.