This document lists major changes and new features by release, going back to the beginning of the toolkit.
Release 1.5.3 is a maintenance release based on the final version of the DITA 1.2 standard.
Version 1.5.3 contains many enhancements, user patches, bug fixes, and significant updates to the documentation.
Release 1.5.3 was developed using a series of test builds released to the community every three weeks. Each item in the list below indicates which test build first contained the update. The eighth public build was the final build, released as the DITA-OT 1.5.3 final stable build.
In earlier releases of OT, configuration parameters were hardcoded into Ant files and Java code. Starting from version 1.5.3 OT has externalized base configurations into base plug-ins in plugins folder. Base plug-in identifiers and folder names start with org.dita:
For backwards compatibility, only configuration files were moved to plug-in folders, the actual code and resource files were left in original locations.
Installations of OT may remove base plug-ins in order to remove funtionality, but the org.dita.base plug-in must be retained as it contains configuration for base functionality such as catalog files and preprocessing.
The plug-in configuration file plugin.xml has support for new syntax, where the old
<feature extension="foo" value="bar.xml" type="file"/>
can be written as
<feature extension="foo" file="bar.xml"/>
The new file attribute only supports a single file, not a comma separated list like the value attribute.
In previous releases multiple feature elements with the same extension ID were not supported. In release 1.5.3 multiple definitions are combined, thus
<feature extension="foo" value="bar,baz"/>
can also be written as
<feature extension="foo" value="bar"/> <feature extension="foo" value="baz"/>
Plug-in extension points can be added with
<extension-point id="extension-id" name="human readable name"/>
Plug-ins should declare all extension points they support. In version 1.5.3 undeclared extension points are supported, but a warning is thrown when running integration in verbose mode. Support for undeclared extension points may be removed in future releases.
Support for the format attribute in PDF2 variable files has been remove as redundant. The same functionality as
<variable id="foo" format="bar">baz</variable>
can be implemented with e.g.
<variable id="foo.bar">baz</variable>
PDF2 no longer logs a warning about PDF2 plug-in replacing the legacy PDF transformation type.
Support for flagging has been added.
Version of FOP that comes with Full Easy Install has been updated from 0.95 to 1.0.
List of transtypes which are considered to be print types has been moved to integrator.properties with the property name print_transtypes. In previous releases this list was hardcoded into Java code. Configuring print transtypes is currently not possible in plug-in configuration files.
Multiple Java classes have been changed from public non-final into package-private final. This enables clearer distinction between public and internal API, and forbits subclassing classes which have not been designed and documented for extensibility.
Release 1.5.2 is a maintenance release based on the final version of the DITA 1.2 standard.
In addition to tweaks to match late changes in the standard, version 1.5.2 contains many enhancements, user patches, bug fixes, and significant updates to the documentation.
Release 1.5.2 was developed using a series of test builds released to the community every three weeks. Each item in the list below indicates which test build first contained the update. The eighth build was the final build, released as the DITA-OT 1.5.2 final stable build.
Release 1.5.1 is a maintenance release based on Committee Draft 01 of the DITA 1.2 standard.
This is the same version of the standard used for the DITA 1.2 Public Review. Release 1.5.1 contains many fixes and minor enhancements. It also includes a preview of a new output transform to the Open Document Format; this transform will be completed in a later release.
Release 1.5.1 was developed using a series of test builds released to the community every three weeks. Each item in the list below indicates which test build first contained the update. There were seven total test builds.
Release 1.5 is a major release based on the new DITA 1.2 draft standard.
It contains full support for DITA 1.2 draft as defined in the fall of 2009 (prior to public review).
In addition to DITA 1.2 support, release 1.5 contains the following updates, which are available in Milestone 21 or earlier of the DITA-OT test builds:
Release 1.4.3 is a maintenance release and is intended to be the last released based fully on DITA 1.1.
It contains a significant amount of preview function for the upcoming DITA 1.2 standard, but the DITA 1.2 document types must be specifically referenced in order to use this capability.
Release 1.4.2.1 is a full build to provide an urgent fix to fix the following critical problem which users found in release 1.4.2.
Release 1.4.2 is a maintenance release to fix defects and make patches based on release 1.4.1.
Release 1.4.2 comes in three versions:
Release 1.4.1 is a maintenance release to fix defects and make patches based on release 1.4.
The DITA-OT Release 1.4 contains full support for the OASIS DITA 1.1 standard. This completes the preliminary support added in the 1.3 and 1.3.1 versions of the toolkit. New and improved items for 1.1 are listed under [Improvements] below. Support for the new bookmap standard is available in the latest version of the FO plug-in, which uses the "pdf2" transform type; it will be released together with or soon after the release of DITA-OT 1.4. The deprecated "pdf" transform type has not been updated for the new bookmap. Together with DITA 1.1 support, the toolkit development team has improved error reporting so that build failures are more accurately reported at the end of the build. Error handling will continue to improve in future releases. Release 1.4 comes in two versions. The full version contains several external packages that are useful or critical to running the toolkit, such as Xalan and the XML Catalog resolver. The smaller package contains only core toolkit code. NOTE ABOUT DEPRECATED CODE: changes for the new DITAVAL standard required a change to code in dita2htmlImpl.xsl. The "flagit" named template is deprecated and will not work with the new ditaval format. Overrides to this step should be updated to use "start-flagit" and "end-flagit". The flagit template will continue to work with the old ditaval but will generate a warning for each call.
Release 1.4 improves the processing of DITA documents using XML Schemas. One was able to process these type of documents in Release 1.3.1 but it meant that the schema location had to have the ablsolute location of the schema in order for the Toolkit properly.
DITA 1.1 introduces the use of URNs to normatively identify the schemas used for validation. The URNs have the following desing pattern "urn:oasis:names:tc:dita:xsd:<schemaDocument>:1.1". You should use these in as the value for the attribute xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation.
Release 1.3.1 is a maintenance release to fix defects and make patches based on release 1.3.
Things to know about OASIS DITA 1.1 support in this release:
The DITA Open Toolkit team understands the need for stability in essential APIs in the Toolit. This verson of the toolkit provides some strategic updates that correct some long-overdue faults in the original implementation. Necessarily, there are some changes to note:
c:\dita-ot\lib\dost.jar
you need to change it to:
c:\dita-ot\lib;c:\dita-ot\lib\dost.jar;c:\dita-ot\lib\resolver.jar
At any time, the full version can be used like a normal installation as long as you update the system variables either in the evironment settings or in a batch file that sets up the shell environment.
Release 1.2.2 is a maintenance release to fix defects and make patches based on release 1.2.1.
Release 1.2.1 is a maintenance release to fix defects and make patches based on release 1.2.
DITA open toolkit Release 1.2 is a major release to add new functions, fulfill new requirements, make some function enhancements and fix bugs over release 1.1.2.1.
DITA-OT 1.2 offers new error handling and logging system. If you invoke your transformation by using java command line where new error handling and logging system is mandatory, you need to set the CLASSPATH Environment Variable for dost.jar. If you invoke your transformation by using an ant script, you need to do one more step after the setting above. That is adding a parameter in your command to invoke an ant script. For example, use ant -f ant\sample_xhtml.xml -logger org.dita.dost.log.DITAOTBuildLogger instead of ant -f ant\sample_xhtml.xml to start a transformation defined in ant script file ant\sample_xhtml.xml.
DITA Open Toolkit 1.2 provides a new function to help users to download, install and use plug-ins and help developers create new plug-ins for DITA Open Toolkit.
DITA Open Toolkit 1.2 provides DITA to Word transforming function to transform DITA source files to output in Microsoft® Word RTF file.
DITA Open Toolkit 1.2 provides a HTML to DITA migration tool, which migrates HTML files to DITA files. This migration tool originally comes from the developerWorks publication of Robert D. Anderson's how-to articles with the original h2d code.
In DITA Open Toolkit 1.2, a new logging method is supported to log messages both on the screen and into the log file. The messages on the screen present user with the status information, warning, error, and fatal error messages. The messages in the log file present user with more detailed information about the transformation process. By analyzing these messages, user can know what cause the problem and how to solve it.
In DITA Open Toolkit 1.2, a new user guide which can help users to use conditional processing is added to toolkit document.
In DITA Open Toolkit 1.2, a new OASIS version of language reference for DITA standard is added to toolkit document.
DITA DTD files are updated to 1.0.1 version in DITA Open Toolkit 1.2.
Release 1.1.2.1 is a full build to provide an urgent fix to fix the following critical problem which users found in release 1.1.2.
For this fix, we have restored all the source DITA files in 'doc' and directories in the binary packages.
Note that the original parameter "args.eclipse.toc" in "Ant tasks and script" was separated to "args.eclipsehelp.toc" for DITA-to-Eclipse help transformation, and "args.eclipsecontent.toc" for DITA-to-dynamic Eclipse content transformation.
ant -f conductor.xml -propertyfile ${dita.temp.dir}/property.temp.Now we have updated the documentation. Please refer to the topic 'Building DITA output with Java command line' on our website for more details.
These updates do not affect standard operation of the toolkit. The main goal of this minor release to enable new users of the toolkit to run the installation verification tests without failure.
Release 1.1.2 is a maintenance release to fix defects and make patches based on release 1.1.1.
Release 1.1.1 is a maintenance release to fix defects and make patches based on release 1.1.
For patch 1284023, we are changing the name of the jar lib file from dost1.0.jar back to dost.jar because we believe we need to keep the jar file name consistent through various releases.
Release 1.1 is a major release to add new functions, fulfill new requirements, make some function enhancements and fix bugs over release 1.0.2.
Release 1.1 implements the new OASIS DITA 1.0 standard for DITA DTDs and Schemas.
DTDs of the previous release locate in the directory dtd/dita132 and schemas of the previous release locate in the directory schema/dita132.
Release 1.1 supports new troff output. Troff output looks like Linux man page output.
An XML catalog, which can consist of several catalog entry files, is a logical structure that describes mapping information between public IDs and URLs of DTD files. A catalog entry file is an XML file that includes a group of catalog entries. If you want to know more about XML catalog, please referXML Catalog.
A catalog entry can be used to locate a unified resource identifier (URI) reference for a certain resource such as a DTD file. An external entity's public identifier is used for mapping to the URI reference. The URI of any system identifier can be ignored.
The href attribute of the topicref is extended to quote a nested topic in a dita file.
For example, in previous releases, href attribute is set like: href = "xxx.dita"; in release 1.1, href attribute can be set like: href = "xxx.dita#abc.dita".
Release 1.1 supports over 20 popular languages within the content of dita files. And it also provides translation function for DITA keywords to over 20 languages. Currently this globalization support fully applies to Eclipse Help and XHTML transformations, and partially applies to other transformations.
Accessibility support is now partially applies to PDF and XHTML transformations.
Please refer to Eclipse Content Provider for detail information.
The output of HTML Help and Java Help transformations contain index information now.
Mapref refers to a special usage of the <topicref> element as a reference to another ditamap file. This allows you to manage the overall ditamap file more easily. A large ditamap file can thus be broken down into several ditamap files, making it easier for the user to manage the overall logical structure. On the other hand, this mechanism also increases the reusability of those ditamap files. If you want to know more about mapref, please refer Mapref.
TOC generation now supported in transformation to Eclipse Help. Eclipse.
Helpset generation now supported in transformation to Java Help.
In Java commands: /indexshow, /outext, /copycss, /xsl, /tempdir.
In Ant scripts: args.indexshow, args.outext, args.copycss, args.xsl, dita.temp.dir
Release 1.0.2 is a maintenance release to fix defects and adds some minor enhancements in release 1.0.1.
Release 1.0.1 is a maintenance release to fix defects and adds some minor enhancements in release 1.0.
The initial release of the Open Sourced DITA Toolkit introduces major architectural changes from the previous, developerWorks version of the Toolkit.
Ant-driven processing means that you can integrate the DITA processing tools into a seamless pipeline within supportive environments such as Eclipse.
The DTDs and Schemas in this version are based on those in the previous dita132 package with bug fixes. The DITA OS Toolkit will later support the OASIS 1.0 specification in its public review form.
Versions of the toolkit prior to Open Source are in the developerWorks XML Zone at this address: DITA Downloads Change logs for those versions are within the Readme files in each distribution.