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. 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

In addition, the following updates are available in DITA-OT 1.4.3:

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

• RFE 1982567 Allow spaces in DITA file names
• RFE 2631145 dita2htmlImpl.xsl should not define doctype
• RFE 2562718 Rename the ant directory to avoid naming collisions with ant
• RFE 2314086 Let maplink generate <linklist> elements
• RFE 2258659 Extend integrator to allow addition of messages.
• RFE 2117337 Customize Integrator to integrate custom directories
• RFE 2074933 Make index output for new transtypes more extensible
• RFE 1995667 Add plugin extension points to preprocess pipeline
• RFE 1972537 Let users specify reloadstylesheet on xslt tasks
• RFE 1803199: Allow ability to include class ancestry in XHTML class attribute

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

• 1996733 Structure Ant <pipeline> better
• 1796007 Refactor of related links HTML for specialized processing
• 1947566 pdf2: allow XEP to be installed elsewhere

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

• 2008294 End flag does not work in ditaval
• 2078563 Keyref not working for external links
• 2027170 maprefImpl.xsl removes part of class attr from topichead
• 2027058 Topichead element stops map processing in ChunkMapReader
• 2001268 DITA-OT documentation wants JDK 1.4
• 2008317 Chunking one topic from a large file hogs memory
• 2219479 <prodinfo> subelement associations are lost in HTML output
• 2340727 No link in TOC to topics in ditabase
• 2317627 Chunking map to create one file should use map file name
• 2143078 Relcolwidth not respected in choicetable
• 1995223 bookmap: bookmeta->bookrights information is not generated
• 1990167 reltable doesn't generate external links correctly
• 1953553 FO 1.4.2 plugin: Inconsistent display of "on page" in xref
• 1951879 Link generation is disabled for bookmaps
• 1997171 topic body suppressed in chapter topics
• 2417980 Toolkit should support both versions of Serbian lang code
• 1947817 Extra topics appear in PDF output when using reltables
• 2004588 Image alt text needs space normalized
• 1954463 Conditional processing multiple PDFs in the same JVM
• 2061301 Useless import of xslt4j stops dost.jar being built
• 2317659 Chunking "by-topic" does not work
• 1955211 Footnotes-by-reference rendered naively
• 2010062 Spaces dropped in indexterm that has keyword
• 2607496 USEINDEX=no breaks HTML Help HHP
• 2570118 <xref> without href drops content
• 2414891 Map contains wrong reference after chunking
• 2010092 example or section title can be orphaned in PDF2
• 1999117 Ubuntu 8.04 | startcmd.sh doesn't work
• 2020317 Many duplicated id in xxx_MERGED.xml in PDF2 output.

Additional items

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