About topic templates

Topic templates provide the starting structure for the various types of topics that CCMS users create. This starting structure makes it much easier for inexperienced DITA users to get started and also ensures uniformity among topics of a similar type

There are a few requirements for topic templates:

The templates must be valid DITA.
Each topic template must correspond to one of the default DITA topic types or to a topic type that you have specialized.
The default DITA topic types are: concept, task, reference, troubleshooting, glossentry, and glossgroup. The CCMS provides an additional topic type, referable-content.
There are no restrictions on the filenames of topic templates.
You might have several templates based on a single topic type. For example, you might document both reports and application dialogs using the reference topic type. While both templates are based on the reference topic type, one can be named reports.xml and the other dialogs.xml.
Each topic template's DOCTYPE declaration must specify the topic type. The public id in the DOCTYPE must correspond to the public id specified for the topic DTD in your custom DTD plugin. The system id must be the name of the DTD that topics created with this template validate against. For example:
```
<!DOCTYPE task PUBLIC "-//ACME//DTD DITA Composite//EN" "AcmeDitabase.dtd">
```
where -//ACME//DTD DITA Composite//EN is the public id and AcmeDitabase.dtd is the system id.
Note:
You can usually find this information in the system/conf/systemid.xml configuration file.
```
<id mapdefault="-//IXIA//DTD DITA Map for Release Management//EN" topicdefault="-//IXIA//DTD IXIA DITA Composite//EN">
    <reference public="-//ACME//DTD DITA Composite//EN" system="AcmeDitabase.dtd"/>
    <reference public="-//ACME//DTD DITA Map for Release Management//EN" system="AcmeMap-drm.dtd"/>
</id>
```
The file extension of the template determines the file extension of topics created using the template.
Available extensions are .xml and .dita. While both are equally acceptable in the CCMS, and there are no issues with mixing files of different extensions, your organization might have specified which extension to use. It is not trivial to change the file extension after a topic is created, so be sure to use the appropriate extension for your topic templates.