Enhancing DITA Publishing With Plugins
The DITA Open Toolkit publishing engine comes with support for predefined output formats such as HTM5, PDF, and Eclipse Help. As the architecture of the publishing engine is plugin-based, over time we have developed lots of useful plugins in the Oxygen XML GitHub account that enhance the publishing and in this blog post, I will enumerate some of them. For the plugins that are already installed within Oxygen XML Editor's DITA Open Toolkit engine, I added the [Bundled] marker.
Plugin that Converts DITA Maps to PDF Using CSS 3 [Bundled]
Maybe our most important work so far, this plugin can publish DITA to PDF using CSS. As a publishing engine, it can use either our Oxygen XML Chemistry processor (freely bundled with Oxygen XML Editor) or the Antenna House and Prince XML engines.
DITA Metrics Report [Bundled]
- Total number of maps and topics that are part of the project.
- Total number of elements used in topics and maps along with a table presenting all element names and their usage counter.
- The used elements used from each DITA domain.
- Total number of attributes used in topics and maps along with a table presenting all attribute names and their usage counter.
- Statistics about the conditional attributes used in the project.
- Information about content reuse.
- Text and content statistics, including both total words (word count) and unique words (vocabulary).
- List of largest and smallest topics and the number of words each one used.
- Listing of all links to resources outside of the project.
Export DITA Map Plugin [Bundled]
You can use this free plugin to create a ZIP file from your entire DITA project. The plugin also takes filters/profiling into account when including topics.
Publish DITA Content with References to Video and Audio Resources. [Bundled]
A DITA Open Toolkit plugin that converts the DITA
<object> element to various HTML 5 structures such as
<<video>, <audio>, or
<iframe>.
Plugin That Adds Edit Links in HTML or PDF-based Outputs [Bundled]
This plugin adds edit links in the HTML or PDF-based outputs allowing subject matter experts to give feedback on the published content directly using a DITA web editing tool (such as Oxygen XML Web Author).
Create Single Merged XML Document From Entire DITA Project [Bundled]
This plugin produces a merged output from the entire DITA map structure without further processing. It is useful if you want to further process the merged XML document for producing various reports.
Dynamically Publish Excel Content as DITA
A DITA
Open Toolkit plugin that dynamically converts to DITA Excel files referenced with
format="excel" in DITA maps.
Dynamically Use JSON Content in DITA Topics
A DITA
Open Toolkit plugin that dynamically converts to DITA JSON files referenced with
format="json" in DITA maps.
Embed HTML Content in DITA Topics [Bundled]
A plugin that allows embedding well-formed HTML content in a DITA topic inside a special element.
Embed LateX Equations in DITA Content
A DITA Open Toolkit plugin that allows publishing embedded Latex mathematical equations to HTML and PDF.
Embed UML Diagrams in DITA Content
A DITA Open Toolkit plugin that allows publishing embedded UML diagrams equations to HTML and PDF.
Float Images in HTML and PDF Outputs
A plugin that allows floating an image referenced in a DITA topic left or right
depending on the @outputclass attribute value specified on it.
Embed Referenced MathML and SVGZ Images in HTML Output
A DITA Open Toolkit plugin that allows you to embed referenced MathML and SVG images in the HTML5 and XHTML output.
Dynamically Convert DITA Tables to Graphs
A DITA Open Toolkit plugin that converts DITA tables having a certain structure to SVG graphs.
Show Oxygen Change Tracking Information in the PDF Output [Bundled]
This plugin allows you to see Oxygen XML Editor track changes (insertions, deletions, or comments) in the PDF output.
Sample Customization Plugin for Classic PDF Output
-
Customize fonts
-
Customize a cover page to provide custom logos and coloring
-
Customize page headers and footers
PDF - Generate Numbers Before Topic's Title
A DITA-OT PDF2 customization plugin that can be installed to generate numbers before each topic's title.
PDF Plugin That Presents Chapters With Landscape Orientation
A PDF customization folder that allows you to define landscape orientation for a certain chapter.