DITA Open Toolkit User Guide and Reference (this document) is the definitive source of information about DITA Open Toolkit (OT), It is also a product of the architecture and the recommended best practices, having been written entirely in DITA XML and produced using the principles and procedures described in the document.
Sections in this topic:
| Chapter (major section) | Contents |
|---|---|
| Information about the current release | Information about the current release of DITA Open Toolkit: system requirements, supported applications, and known problems. |
| Release history | Summary information about prior releases of DITA Open Toolkit. |
| Evaluating DITA and DITA Open Toolkit | How to determine what it would take to create your DITA and DITA Open Toolkit authoring and production system. |
| Installing DITA Open Toolkit | How to install and upgrade DITA Open Toolkit on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. |
| Setting up your working environment | How to configure your DITA editor and set up your source file directory. |
| Processing (building) and publishing DITA documents | How to process (build) and publish DITA documents. |
| Troubleshooting the build process | How to troubleshoot the build process. |
| Creating DITA topics | How to create DITA topics (base topics, concepts, tasks, and reference topics). |
| Creating DITA topics | How to create DITA maps to define content structure. |
| Linking DITA topics | How to link DITA topics using cross-references (xrefs), related links, and relationship tables. |
| Managing your content | How to manage your content using backup, source control and content management. |
| Reuse concepts and techniques | How to reuse content (using conrefs), information design (using specializations), and processing code. |
| Expanding and customizing access to your information | How to expand access to your information through indexing, the use of metadata, and filtering (conditional processing). |
| Customizing your published output | How to customize your published output. |
| Localizing (translating) your DITA content | Information about translating the content in your DITA projects. |
| Distributing your published content | How to distribute your published content. |
| Migrating legacy content to DITA | How to migrate legacy content to DITA. |
| Sample files | Information about the DITA sample source files that come with DITA Open Toolkit. |
| Frequently asked questions (FAQs) | Frequently asked questions about DITA and DITA Open Toolkit (OT). |
| DITA core vocabulary | Information about the DITA core vocabulary, a list of the terms in the vocabulary, and links to related terms and other information. |
An audience is a target group of users.
This document was written for both beginning and advanced users currently implimenting or planning to impliment DITA and DITA Open Toolkit to produce structured XML documents to be published through any of the supported channels.
Target audience categories and types for this document are:
Before you use this document you should be familiar with your operating system environment (Windows, UNIX, or Mac OS) and the authoring tool you will use to create DITA files. We recommend using a DITA-aware editor. You may need to consult the documentation that came with your operating system and authoring tool as you use DITA and DITA Open Toolkit.
Before you use DITA Open Toolkit, be sure your operating environment meets the system requirements described in System requirements and supported applications.
For more information about how we wrote the document, suggestions, guidelines, tips, and techniques, see the individual "production notes" sections that are part of each chapter. For example, for our suggestions about troubleshooting the build process, see Production notes (troubleshooting).