WORK IN PROGRESS

Background

OASIS (soon) has released Version 1.2 of the OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) specification developed by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee. Complete, OASIS-branded versions of the spceification are available for you to download at the following site:

 

http://dita.xml.org/news/dita-12-submitted-for-oasis-ballot

In its complete form, this specification consists of the following separately buildable sections, each with its own DITA map:

• Introduction (spec/introduction.ditamap)
• Architectural Specification (architectural-specification.ditamap)
• Language Reference Specification (language-reference.ditamap)
• DITA Conformance Statement (conformance.dita)
• Non-normative Information (non-normative-information.ditamap)

To build these specification subsets, you must install a build environment that is compliant with DITA Version 1.2 DTDs or schema. These DITA-compliant build environments are available as separate, downloadable packages or as components integrated with your DITA-compliant editor or content management system. For purposes of illustration, the build environment documented here consists of the following freely available, and uncustomized packages:

• DITA Open Toolkit (DITA-OT1.5.2_m6 available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/dita-ot/)
  • MS HTMLHelp (.chm) transformation
  • OpenOffice Document (.odt) transformation
  • PDF (Idiom) transformation
  • XHTML transformation
• DITA for Publishers (D4P Version 0.9.10 available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/dita4publishers/)
  • ePub transformation
  • Kindle transformation

Basic Build Procedure

To set up a default build environment, do the following.

 

1. Download and install the most current version of the DITA Open Toolkit.

   For purposes of illustration, let's assume that you have installed the toolkit in a folder named DITA-OT1.5.2.

2. Download the DITA Version 1.2 specification sourec files from the following site.

   http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.2/cs01/spec/DITA1.2-spec.zip

3. Unarchive these source files to a new folder at the root of the DITA Open Toolkit that you just installed.

   For example, create a folder named DITA-OT1.5.2\dita1.2 and extract the source file to it.

4. Write one or more build scripts (typically ant) for specific transform types and specific specification subset maps.
   • Introduction (introduction.ditamap)
   • Architectural Specification (architectural-specification.ditamap)
   • Language Reference Specification (language-reference.ditamap)
   • DITA Conformance Statement (conformance.dita)
   • Non-normative Information (non-normative-information.ditamap)

   Modeling these build scripts on the ones in DITA-OT1.5.2\samples\ant_sample is a good starting place.

5. Run the build scripts.

Basic Build Results and Notes

The DITA Version 1.2 specification is a great resource for learning about new features such as , , and many others. That said, the specification is a complex and not all specification subsets build with a default DITA-OT configuration.

Specification Subet Map/Topic	MS HTMLHelp	Open Office	PDF	XHTML
introduction.ditamap	Successful	Successful	Successful	Successful
architectural-specification.ditamap	Successful	Successful	Successful	Successful
language-reference.ditamap	Successful	Successful	Successful	Successful
conformance.dita	Successful	Successful	Successful	Successful
non-normative-information.ditamap	Successful	Successful	Successful	Successful

Notes and limitations

• Note-1: Java memory
• Note-2: TBD
• Note-3: TBD
• Note-4: TBD

Generating Specification Subsets for ePub and Kindle

Incremental requirements:

• ePub Plugin . . .
• kindlegarden . . .

Specification Subet Map/Topic	ePub	Kindle
introduction.ditamap	Successful	Successful
architectural-specification.ditamap	Successful	Successful
language-reference.ditamap	Successful	Successful
conformance.dita	Successful	Successful
non-normative-information.ditamap	Successful	Successful

Advanced Configurations

See "Configuring your build environment to generate OASIS-styled PDFs".

 

 

Stan Doherty (Stan@modularwriting.com)

OASIS DITA Technical Committee

stan@modularwriting.com