Publishing with the DITA Open Toolkit


The DITA Open Toolkit, or dita-ot for short, is a set of Java-based, open source tools that provide a "reference implementation" for processing DITA maps and topical content. You can download the OT and install it for free on your computer, to get started with topic-based writing and publishing.

The DITA Open Toolkit is a modest publishing system. The Toolkit transforms DITA content (maps and topics) into publishing deliverable formats such as web (XHTML), print (PDF), and Help (CHM and Eclipse). Your output files are simply generated in your file system. It is up to you to move them to your website, or into your print publishing process.

The OT is integrated into many authoring tools (e.g.,FrameMaker, <oXygen/>, XMetaL) and content management systems (e.g., Astoria, Bluestream, IXIASOFT, XyEnterprise).

If you find installing the OT too difficult, consider a free running version of the DITA Open Toolkit provided as an online software-as-a-service by the DITA Users organization.

There you can have an online workspace folder with DITA docsets from IBM and Comtech Services. Edit the files and build/publish them as web (XHTML), print (PDF), and Help (Eclipse). All your work can be browsed on the web by your colleagues as a portfolio of your DITA work with the OT.

The home page of the DITA Open Toolkit is http://dita-ot.sourceforge.net/. The DITA Open Toolkit Installation Guide, which is on that page, contains a list of supporting open-source software to download, together with a set of versions that are known to be compatible.

The instructions on how to install and use the OT are maintained by Anna van Raaphorst and Dick Johnson as the DITA Open Toolkit User Guide. Note that there are multiple packages available for the toolkit; if you are trying it out for the first time, you probably want to get the "full" package (now called "full easy install") that comes with other required software, and requires less manual setup.

Don Day maintains a DITA Open Toolkit Resources Page.


See also:

Simple Interface For Plugin Installation and Upgrade

Simple Interface For Plugin Installation and Upgrade

Problem: Manual Installation Process

Installing a plugin takes two or three steps, depending upon the platform and installed software.
  1. Unzip the plugin package
  2. Copy the generated directory into the “demo” or “plugins” folder
  3.  Run the integrator task
Steps 1 and 2 may be combined on many platforms, if the user knows how to “target” the unzip of a directory appropriately.

This process is actually pretty error prone. Reported user mistakes include:

  • creating a directory and then unzipping the package into it (resulting in an extra directory)
  • running the integrator task in the wrong directory

Problem: Automated Installation Process

A software developer or system administrator wishes to make scripts that will automatically install a set of plugins. Today, this installation process necessarily depends upon the directory structure of the DITA Toolkit. This makes reorganizations of the toolkit potentially backwards incompatible.

Proposal

Given a properly configured DITA toolkit, installing a plugin should be a single step, like

    java -jar lib/dost.jar /plugin:”c:\My Download Files\FrameMaker_adapter.zip”

No matter what the directory structure of future DITA toolkits, this command line will remain invariant and will copy the right files to the right places.

This implies a fixed structure for plugins. The proposed structure is as described below.

Plugin Structure

A DITA toolkit plugin is a zip file consisting of a single top-level directory. This top-level directory must contain a file called “plugin.xml”. It will typically contain main other files but this standard does not address the structure of those files.