S1000D, DITA,
iSpec 2200 or Shipdex?

Which standard is for what?

All four structure technical documentation, but for different products. S1000D is for complex equipment that has to be maintained for decades: aircraft, vehicles, ships and their systems. DITA is for software and general product documentation. iSpec 2200 is the standard of commercial aviation. Shipdex is a cut-down S1000D for merchant shipping.

In practice, the choice is often made before you make it. A defence contract names S1000D and an issue. An airline customer expects iSpec 2200 or S1000D under the civil aviation rules. A shipowner may ask for Shipdex. The question is less which standard is best than which one the customer reads.

The four standards side by side

S1000D: data modules for complex equipment

S1000D breaks a manual into data modules, each about one thing and each with its own code, kept in a common source database and assembled into publications. Applicability says which module applies to which variant, and business rules, exchanged as a BREX, set how the standard is used on a project. The newest issue is Issue 7, from 2026, and like all issues it is free to download.

Its strength is the long life of a product: thousands of modules, many variants, decades of revisions. Its cost is the work of writing to it.

DITA: topics for software and products

DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture, is an OASIS standard. Content is written in topics of a type, such as concept, task or reference, and organised by maps into deliverables. Reuse works through content references and keys, and new topic types can be derived from the existing ones by specialisation. Version 1.3 is the current standard. DITA 2.0 is still a draft: its third beta, published in July 2026, says the draft is still under development.

DITA is generic by design. It knows nothing about maintenance tasks, spare parts or the breakdown of a ship, which is exactly what S1000D brings.

iSpec 2200: the manuals of commercial aviation

iSpec 2200 is the standard for aircraft maintenance information from manufacturer to airline. It replaced ATA Spec 100 and Spec 2100 in 2000, comes with SGML document type definitions for each kind of manual and carries the ATA numbering system for aircraft systems. Revision 2025.1 costs $2,815 for a single user and is free for members of the ATA e-Business Program.

Civil aviation also writes S1000D. The same body publishes Spec 1000BR, the business rules for using S1000D in civil aviation. They cover Issues 4.1, 4.2 and 6. Issue 5.0 and Issue 7 are, in A4A’s words, “not supported for Civil Aviation use”.

Shipdex: S1000D for merchant ships

Shipdex was launched in February 2008 by equipment makers and shipping companies, among them Alfa Laval, Grimaldi, MacGregor, MAN Diesel and Yanmar. It takes ten data module types from S1000D and builds them on the Issue 2.3 schemas, with Issue 4.2 for learning content, so that equipment makers can deliver data that a shipowner imports straight into the ship’s maintenance system.

Its own site is frank about the reach: “the adoption of Shipdex has been slow”, it says, “largely due to the somewhat difficult question of who should take the lead and set Shipdex as a firm requirement”. The naval programmes we looked at ask for full S1000D, not Shipdex.

Can they be combined?

Yes. A split practitioners often recommend puts the hardware in S1000D and the software and process documentation in DITA. The documentation firm JANA put it in one line: S1000D for “items that you can fly, drive or float”.

There is no official mapping between the two. A French expert group with PTC and Dassault Aviation reported in 2012 that “the full set of S1000D modules can be embedded in one DITA publication”, but each organisation still builds its own bridge.

How to choose

1. Read the contract. A defence or civil aviation customer usually decides the standard and the issue for you.
2. Look at the product. Equipment that is maintained for decades, in variants, points to S1000D. Software and fast-changing products point to DITA.
3. Look at who reads the data. A technician with an interactive publication, an airline’s engineering department or a shipowner’s maintenance system each need something different.
4. Count the revisions. The more often content changes and the more places it appears, the more a module-based standard pays off.
5. Check the tools and people you have. A standard nobody on the team can write to is the most expensive one.

Where Tracium fits

Tracium writes S1000D. It reads supplier manuals in PDF, Word and Excel, whatever standard, if any, they were written to, drafts the data modules, checks them against your rules and links every step to the page it came from.