Plans for DITA Open Toolkit version 1.5

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.

We currently anticipate that DITA-OT 1.5 will contain support for the DITA 1.2 specification. Development of 1.5 will be broken up into a series of iterations, with one or more DITA 1.2 item completed in each iteration. We will update the plans here as each iteration begins and ends. Each iteration will end with a milestone release available under the "test build" heading at the DITA-OT download page on SourceForge.

The original proposal for each OASIS DITA 1.2 Item is at ImplementationStatus1.2, although the items may be revised as they are added to the draft specification. The latest draft specification is available in DITA, CHM, or TOCJS format.

Items under development in the current iteration

Due to holiday schedules for the primary developers, Milestone 21 will be a smaller update, with an approximate release date of September 30. Due to the shorter development period, Milestone 21 will focus on small bug fixes and enhancements, including:

• RFE 2859612 Add support for Serbian (Latin)
• RFE 2002857 homeID in javahelp .hs file is not set
• RFE 2780998 startcmd.sh: Run the user's shell, not sh
• RFE 2120219 Add PDF to the supported image
• RFE 1623246 Support RFC4646 language tags in Index modules
• Bug 1931457 Need to identify transtype during XHTML output step
• Bug 2860433 Keyref on <image> fails to resolve
• Bug 2860199 Chunk to-content in submap resulting in missing output
• Bug 2860168 Suppress data and data-about in PDF output
• Bug 2856742 Problem of keys attribute in nested topicref elements
• Bug 2857167 conrefImpl.xsl 1.6.4.13 has duplicate variable decls

Items available in Milestone 20 (September 14, 2009)

• RFE 1725284: add support for headings for sections within task (XHTML only - finishes the implementation begun in Milestone 4).
• RFE 2845278 Add Ant parameters for XSLT parameters
• RFE 1367897 Xref content generation enforces formatting choices
• OASIS Item 12011: Support for the new DITA 1.2 element <stepsection>
• OASIS Item 12055: Support for passing attributes through map references, as clarified by OASIS with DITA 1.2
• Bug 2854546 Peer xref leads to invalid destination error in PDF
• Bug 2849200 Style on ditaval prop or revprop is ignored
• Bug 2845598 1.5-M18-demo/fo/Customization pdf.formatter
• Bug 2842753 catalog-dita.xml has invalid entries
• Bug 2846111 Unnecessary text generated for external xref

Additional work is being completed on several PDF2 related items. For more information about PDF2, see Plans for the DITA Open Toolkit PDF2 Plug-in.

Items available in Milestone 19 (August 24, 2009)

Milestone 19 adds support for DITA 1.2 constraint validation into the conref processor. It also contains the following items from the SourceForge trackers:

• Bug 2839035 Chunk code cannot parse xref with &
• Bug 2829350 Build_demo.xml places files in incorrect directory
• 2832696 Move meta module pushes content into non-DITA file

Items available in Milestone 18 (August 3, 2009)

Milestone 18 completes the initial implementation of Delayed Conref for Eclipse output. It also contains the following fixes and enhancements:

• RFE 2824371 Support Hindi and Urdu for XHTML output
• Bug 2815485 Prolog indexterm not processed properly for PDF
• Bug 2815492 PDF: keep-with-next on shortdesc
• Bug 2819853 missing nested indexterm after 3rd
• Bug 2824907 1.5 M17 Bug - FileNotFoundException export.xml eclipsehelp
• Bug 2826143 Move meta module discards link text

Items available in Milestone 17 (July 10, 2009)

Milestone 17 contains an initial implementation of the DITA 1.2 "Delayed Conref Resolution" function. This function will be completed for Eclipse XHTML output in a future milestone. The milestone also includes several bug fixes from the SourceForge bug tracker:

• 2811358 Incorrect entry@colname in middle file at PDF generation
• 2811980 pdf2: japanese translate for generated page number of a ref
• 2813082 Eclipse help MANIFEST.MF filename wrong case, needs CRLF
• Use fileparameter in Ant 1.7 to replace processing instruction in intermediate dita files

Items available in Milestone 16 (June 23, 2009)

Milestone 16 completes the initial implementation of the OASIS DITA 1.2 Controlled Values File. In addition, it contains the following items:

• RFE 2790755 Process in unique temp directories (Designed to allow multiple builds to take place at once)
• Bug 2797030 Chunking fails with bookmap
• Bug 2796614 Leading slash breaks PLUGINS_ROOT usage for Eclipse help
• Bug 2799543 Child links in HTML Help output are wrong
• Bug 2804442 Bad param name in prereq-fmt template's call to sect-heading
• Bug 2782503 Extra space before bullet list in xhtml output DITA-OT 1.4.3
• Bug 2791696 reltable DITA 1.2 (#12048)

Items available in Milestone 15 (May 27, 2009)

Milestone 15 includes support for filtering based on Controlled Values Files (a new map specialization that is part of DITA 1.2). In addition to that major new item, the Milestone contains the following updates from the SourceForge enhancement, patch, and bug trackers:

• RFE 2698921 Add a way to set attributes on <body>
• Patch 2778178 Flagging code duplicates XSL
• Patch 2790337 Add extension points to related-links code
• Bug 1629094 docbook creates empty simplelists
• Bug 1628936 transtype=docbook does not handle publisher and copyright element
• Bug 2748371 Revision + ID gives XSL error
• Bug 2759964 HTML outputs filters conditional topics poorly
• Bug 2774128 startcmd.sh is encoded with DOS line endings in v1.5 M13
• Bug 2788069 Topicmerge does not handle copy-to properly
• Bug 2759964 HTML outputs filters conditional topics poorly
• Bug 2696229 FO plugin code incompatible with Saxon 9 (OT1.4.3 default)
• Bug 2696191 Java libraries missing from 1.4.3 distributions
• Bug 2317681 Extra files generated when many topics are chunked to one
• Bug 2724090 XHTML: conreffed by-reference footnotes break w/ chunking
• Bug 2418932 toc attribute does not work for references to ditamaps
• Bug 2317581 inline formatting in shortdesc
• Bug 2788069 Topicmerge does not handle copy-to properly
• Bug 2547437 zh_TW.properties and zh_CN.properties contents are mixed up
• Bug 2791278 Keyref Resolution Fails for Non-Descendant Topics
• Bug 2791345 Topicmeta searchtitles in map not used in topic
• Bug 2790807 Demo code should use new PDF output

Items available in Milestone 14 (April 29, 2009)

Milestone 14 now uses the DITA 1.2 document types when processing, without the need to reference those document types directly. It also includes support for the processing-role attribute in maps, which is the most recent addition to DITA 1.2 and allows a map to reference topics that will not generate output with other topics.

Items available in Milestone 13 (April 9, 2009)

Milestone 13 includes an update to metadata cascading within maps; previously, metadata would cascade from topicref to topicref and into the referenced topic, but the temporary map was not re-saved with the cascaded values. This is now fixed, so that additional processing may be done on the map without having to re-implement the cascade logic.

Milestone 13 also fixes several bugs reported at SourceForge:

• 2739236 plus-allhtml-svgobject handles <alt> badly
• 2723928 gen-toc template not matching properly
• 2723715 Itemgroup sets @id when element is not open
• 2712074 XHTML: chunk=to-content on map breaks by-reference footnotes
• 2706725 Single quote inserted in empty table cells in FO
• 2647292 HTML stylesheets should style <wintitle> and <filepath>
• 2629271 maplink: should not modify href if scope=external
• 2629256 mapref: should not modify href if scope=external
• 2573681 Move link module does extra processing

Items available in Milestone 12 (March 18, 2009)

Milestone 12 was released April 18, 2009. Due to delays in approval of DITA 1.2, and consequential delays in the 1.2 based DITA-OT 1.5, milestone 12 also released as the official an official release in the 1.4.* series: DITA-OT 1.4.3 Release

Milestone 12 includes the following updates over previous milestones:

• Upgraded versions of many libraries now bundled with the Easy Install package, including Saxon, Ant, and FOP
• Running a PDF transform now runs the PDF2 Plugin by default; select the transform type legacypdf to get the older code.
• The PDF code now runs with updated versions of Saxon
• RFE 2562718 Rename the ant directory to avoid naming collisions with ant
• RFE 2631145 dita2htmlImpl.xsl should not define doctype

Items available in Milestone 11 (February 25, 2009)

• Maintenance fixes and updates
  
  • Xref without href drops content
  • USEINDEX=no breaks HTML Help HHP
  • Spaces dropped in indexterm that has keyword
• RFE 2314086 Let maplink generate <linklist> elements
• RFE 2258659 Extend integrator to allow addition of messages.
• RFE 2117337 Customize Integrator to integrate custom directories
• Upgraded to Ant 1.7
• Saxon is now bundled for use with PDF2
• PDF2 works with FOP (no requirement for a specific rendering engine)
• Moldflow plugins now available (such as the plus-plugin)

Items available in Milestone 10 (January 20, 2009)

• Maintenance fixes (primarily for chunking) - Design for chunking enhancements
• Updates to PDF2 processing

Items available in Milestone 9 (December 17, 2008)

• Improvements to support DITA 1.2 item 12050 (new linking attributes)
• Maintenance fixes (many related to chunking, others related to previous test builds)

• "Full easy install" includes both the older and newer versions of FOP as we transition to embedded support of the PDF2 code

Items available in Milestone 8 (November 24, 2008)

• Support for <coderef> (OASIS Item 12060)
• Improvements on OASIS Item 12026: New glossary type: processing to support surface form of acronyms when appropriate
• Include latest PDF2 plugin in "full easy install", and migrate older PDF transform to demo directory; the older PDF transform is now called with the transform type "legacypdf"

Items available in Milestone 7 (October 31, 2008)

• OASIS Item 12026: New glossary type: processing to support surface form of acronyms when appropriate ([[Design for implementing OASIS Item 12026]])
• OASIS Item 12060: Support for new referencing element <coderef>(Design for implementing OASIS Item 12060)

Items available in Milestone 6 (September 27, 2008)

• OASIS Item 12007: Keyref (Design for implementing OASIS Item 12007) - finish keyref support by turning non-linking items (term, keyword) into links
• OASIS Item 12048: Add topic references to reltable headers to improve link management. Design for implementing OASIS Item 12048
• RFE 2074933 Update to Java Index processing to make it extensible for new index types

Items available in Milestone 5 (September 2, 2008)

• OASIS DITA 1.2 Item 12007: Additional support for keyref (conkeyref, text insertion)
• OASIS DITA 1.2 Item 12043: Draft comment supported in shortdesc
• OASIS DITA 1.2 Item 12050a: support for new longdescref element
• Bug fix 2061301 Useless import of xslt4j stops dost.jar being built

Items available in Milestone 4 (August 8, 2008)

• OASIS Item 12007: Keyref (Design for implementing OASIS Item 12007) - including the following items:

• Resolve keyref values in a map (redirecting the href on a topicref)
• Resolve keyref values in a topic (redirecting the href on an xref or link)

• Improve implementation for OASIS Item 12015: Conref push
• Bug fix 2027170: maprefImpl.xsl removes part of class attr from topichead
• Bug fix 2027058: Topichead element stops map processing in ChunkMapReader
• RFE 1803199: allow ability to include class ancestry in XHTML class attribute
• RFE 1725284: add support for headings for sections within task. INCOMPLETE - translations added, output support not yet included.

Items available in Milestone 3 (July 22, 2008)

• OASIS Item 12015: Conref push (ready for design) [[Design for implementing 12015]] - initial implementation included in Milestone 3, more to come later
• Chunking fixes Design for fixing chunking bugs
  • Bug fix 1897542 Chunk to-content may need to rewrite topic IDs
  • Bug fix 1897497 Chunking to-content reprocesses maps and duplicates content
  • Bug fix 2008317 Chunking one topic from a large file hogs memory
• Bug fix 2008294 End flag does not work in ditaval
• Bug fix 1999117 Ubuntu 8.04 | startcmd.sh doesn't work
• OASIS Item 12020: New text element, support with fallthrough as text
• OASIS Item 12021: sectiondiv and bodydiv: support two new block elements
• Bug fix 2004588 Image alt text needs space normalized
• Bug fix 1553905 Unkown XSL-FO property in dita2fo-calstable.xsl
• RFE 1996733 Structure Ant <pipeline> better
• Fix backslashes in $PATH2PROJ in XSLT

Items available in Milestone 2 (June 25, 2008)

• DITA 1.2 OASIS Item 12013: Conref range 12013 design
• RFE 1982567 Support for spaces in file and directory names RFE 1982567 design
• RFE 1995667 Add plugin extension points to preprocess pipeline
• Additional updates to OASIS Item 12017 (introduced in Milestone 1)
• Bug fix 2001268 DITA-OT documentation still asks for JDK 1.4
• Plugin enhancements to <require> in plugin.xml

Items available in Milestone 1 (May 30, 2008)

• DITA 1.2: Include DITA 1.2 draft DTDs and Schemas (preserve DITA 1.1 modules for users that want a specific version)
• DITA 1.2 OASIS Item 12017: Updated metadata in maps to match topics. Need update to code that pushes metadata into topics and pulls metadata from topics; need to update output processors that use this metadata. 12017 design
• DITA 1.2 OASIS Item 12018: support for navtitle element (navtitle attribute is deprecated), possibly other elements. 12018 design
• RFE 1972537 Let users specify reloadstylesheet on xslt tasks
• RFE 1796007 Refactor of related links HTML for specialized processing
• Bug fix 1955211 Footnotes-by-reference rendered naively
• Bug fix 1900429 Inconsistent stylesheets for topics and index files in XHTML
• Bug fix 1803199 XHTML: Add class to generated <pre>

Items for future DITA-OT 1.5 iterations:

The following DITA 1.2 items are still incomplete:

• OASIS Item 12020: New text element, support with fallthrough as text (still need for PDF)
• OASIS Item 12021: sectiondiv and bodydiv: support two new block elements (still need for PDF)
• OASIS Item 12043: draft-comment in shortdesc, body, conbody. Need to validate for PDF.

• OASIS Learning Subcommittee work: make plugin available
• OASIS Machine Industry work: make plugin available

New items for consideration, unrelated to OASIS

• Improved JavaDoc in source code
• Easier (possibly graphical) install
• Easy to use sample style overrides
• Common interfaces for calling builds, when for products that imbed the toolkit
• XSLT 2.0 support
• Simple interface for setting parameters when running a build