DITA-OT 1.4.3 Release

DITA Open Toolkit version 1.4.3

DITA-OT 1.4.3 was released on March 18, 2009. DITA-OT 1.4.3 is a maintenance release which includes a number of bug fixes and enhancements. It is equivalent to DITA-OT 1.5 Milestone 12, and includes the same fixes and enhancements.

As with other 1.4* releases, DITA-OT 1.4.3 is based on OASIS DITA 1.1. However, it does include a significant amount of preview function based on DITA 1.2. In order to make use of that demo-level function, documents must explicitly reference the DITA 1.2 document types, which are shipped in the toolkit's demo directory.

DITA-OT 1.4.3 is available in three versions:

  1. The "Minimal" package contains only the core processing code.
  2. The "Standard" package contains the core processing code, plus demos, documentation, and samples.
  3. The "Full easy install" package contains the standard package plus external libraries useful for many toolkit processes (such as Saxon and ANT), plus a batch file to setup a local environment.

In previous releases the "Full easy install" package was known as the Full package; with release 1.5 we expect to transition to the name "Easy install" for this package. More information on packaging is available at DITA-OT Packages.

DITA-OT 1.4.3 includes the following major or noteworthy enhancements:

  1. The PDF codebase switched from the older deprecated code to the plugin previously known as PDF2. Running a build with the transform type PDF or PDF2 will now run the new code. To continue using the older code, set your transform type to "legacypdf".
  2. The PDF plugin now runs with FOP, as well as with the latest version of Saxon.
  3. The Full Easy Install package now ships with Saxon 9B instead of with Xalan, and code in the DITA-OT package has been updated to work with Saxon 9B.
  4. The Full Easy Install package updates the versions of many open source libraries (including Ant and FOP)
  5. RFE 1982567 Allow spaces in DITA file names
  6. Preview function for the majority of the upcoming OASIS DITA 1.2 standard, including everything from milestone builds one through twelve of DITA-OT 1.5

Update April 2, 2009: As mentioned, the FO plugin is now a core part of the DITA Open Toolkit. However, a JAR file included in the release no longer contains some compiled XEP libraries that allow the code to seamlessly work with XEP. This will be fixed in future releases, but until then please see the following note from Joe Gelb about how to use XEP with DITA-OT 1.4.3: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/message/13796

 

The following additional updates are available in DITA-OT 1.4.3:

 

Enhancements: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=132728&atid=725077

Patches: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=132728&atid=725076

Bug Fixes: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=132728&atid=725074

Additional items

  • Plugin enhancements to <require> in plugin.xml
  • Fix backslashes in $PATH2PROJ in XSLT

XML.org Focus Areas: BPEL | DITA | ebXML | IDtrust | OpenDocument | SAML | UBL | UDDI
OASIS sites: OASIS | Cover Pages | XML.org | AMQP | CGM Open | eGov | Emergency | IDtrust | LegalXML | Open CSA | OSLC | WS-I