The DITA Open Toolkit

The DITA Open Toolkit, or DITA-OT for short, is a set of Java-based, open source tools that provide processing for DITA maps and topic content. You can download the OT and install it for free on your computer to get started with topic-based writing and publishing. Note: while the DITA Standard itself is owned and developed by OASIS, the DITA Open Toolkit is an independent, open source implementation of the standard.

 

The best place to request enhancements to the DITA Open Toolkit is by opening a Request For Enhancement (RFE) in the RFE tracker at the DITA-OT Project page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dita-ot/

General Information

• Release notes for the current release: DITA-OT Release 1.5.3
• Plans for the next release, currently under development: DITA-OT Release 1.5.4
• Descriptions of the available DITA-OT Packages
• Download page for the latest stable release: DITA-OT final packages
• Download page for the latest test build: DITA-OT test builds
• Installing the DITA Open Toolkit
• Publishing with the DITA Open Toolkit
• DITA Processing - what happens during my build?
• List of known Plugins for the DITA Open Toolkit
• Getting the PDF2 plugin to work with FOP in older versions of the toolkit: PDF2 with FOP  (Note: as of DITA-OT 1.5, the PDF2 code ships as the default PDF process, and supports FOP)
• Plans for future versions of the DITA Open Toolkit

Discussion topics

• Incremental builds
• Fix indexing
• Document refactoring

Developer information

• For those wishing to contribute to the project, contribution forms are found here: http://dita-ot.sourceforge.net/
• General coding practices in the DITA-OT:
  • XSLT coding practices in the DITA-OT
  • Java coding practices in the DITA-OT
• For information on how to extend the the DITA-OT with plug-ins, see all recognized DITA-OT Plug-in extensions
• List of Ant/XSLT parameters to the DITA-OT transform
• Information on Regression testing in the toolkit

Developers and vendors using the toolkit are encouraged to join the dita-ot-developer mailing list. This list is used to discuss upcoming changes that may impact developers or vendors: https://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=132728

Active contributors

The toolkit was originally developed within IBM, but was contributed to SourceForge in 2005 and has been updated significantly since that time. Significant contributors include (but are not limited to):

• Robert D Anderson (IBM) - Architect and current project lead, frequent developer and doc updator, primary maintainer of this set of Wiki pages
• Jason (Jian Le Shen, IBM) - Primary developer within IBM
• Rob Justice - DITA-OT Documentation, starting June 2010
• Eric Sirois (IBM) - contributor for several chunks of Eclipse and indexing related code
• Jarno Elovirta (Citec Information) - Java and XSLT developer
• Aryeh Sanders and Reuven Weiser (Suite Solutions) - responsible for PDF output using the PDF2 transform
• ...

Previous contributors

• Don Day (IBM) - Original project lead
• Stephen Zhang (IBM) - Primary developer through the first several years of the toolkit
• Deborah Pickett (Moldflow) - Frequent developer and contributor
• Chris Wong - original contributor of the PDF2 plugin
• Dick Johnson and Anna van Raaphorst (VR Communcations, Inc) - Original contributors of the DITA User Guide

Information about individual releases

• Release currently under development: DITA-OT Release 1.5.4
• Latest Stable Release (June 24, 2011): DITA-OT Release 1.5.3
• DITA-OT Release 1.5.2
• DITA-OT Release 1.5.1
• DITA-OT 1.5
• DITA-OT 1.4.3 Release
• DITA-OT 1.4.2.1 Release
• DITA-OT 1.4.2 Release
• DITA-OT 1.4.1 Release
• DITA-OT 1.4 Release
• DITA-OT 1.3.1 Release
• DITA-OT 1.3
• DITA-OT 1.2.2
• DITA-OT 1.2.1
• DITA-OT 1.2
• DITA-OT 1.1.2.1 patch
  
• DITA-OT 1.1.2
• DITA-OT 1.1.1
• DITA-OT 1.1
• DITA-OT 1.0.2
• DITA-OT 1.0.1
• DITA-OT 1.0
• Cumulative release notes for all DITA-OT releases: http://dita-ot.sourceforge.net/readme/DITA-changes.html