Release history

For information about the current release of DITA Open Toolkit, see Release 1.3.1 and 1.3 information.

Release 1.2.2

Release 1.2.2 was a maintenance release based on release 1.2 in which 24 bugs were fixed.

Also included were the following improvements:
  • Chinese support was added for Word RTF.
  • The plug-in architecture and dependency handling was improved.

Release 1.2.1

Release 1.2.1 was a maintenance release based on release 1.2 in which 12 bugs were fixed.

Also included were the following improvements:
  • A problem with corrupted tables generated in Word RTF was fixed.
  • Pictures are now merged into the Word RTF instead of linking to them.
  • The lq element is supported in Word RTF.
  • Generated text can be translated to different languages in Word RTF.
  • In Word RTF, if no <choption> is specified, a head is generated in tables.

Release 1.2

Release 1.2 was a major release to add new and improved functionality, fulfill new requirements, and fix bugs.

New and enhanced features


  1. Plug-in architecture

    New capabilities were added to help users download, install, and use plug-ins, and to help developers create new plug-ins for DITA Open Toolkit.

  2. Word RTF transformation

    Capabilities were added to allow transformations from DITA source files to output in a Word RTF file.

  3. HTML-to-DITA migration tool

    A tool was added that migrates HTML files to DITA files. This tool originated from the developerWorks publication of Robert D. Anderson's how-to articles with the original h2d code.

  4. Problem determination

    Logging was improved to capture additional status and transformation information, as well as warning, error, and fatal error messages both on-screen and in the log file.

  5. Conditional processing documentation

    Information about conditional processing was added to the DITA Open Toolkit documentation set.

  6. Language reference documentation

    The OASIS DITA standard language reference was added to the Toolkit documentation set.

  7. DTD files

    The DTD files in DITA Open Toolkit were updated to the DITA 1.0.1 level.

Bug fixes: 19

Release 1.1.2.1

Release 1.1.2.1 fixed one bug: the build process failed with the "Ant all" parameter, which prevented users from running the installation verification tests.

Release 1.1.2

Release 1.1.2 was a maintenance release with 14 bug fixes, minor changes to some Ant parameters, support for additional Java parameters, and minor changes to the organization of the doc directory.

Release 1.1.1

Release 1.1.1 was a maintenance release with 11 bug fixes and a dost1.0.jar name change back to dost.jar.

Release 1.1

Release 1.1 was a major release to add new and improved functionality, fulfill new requirements, and fix bugs.

New and enhanced features in release 1.1


  1. Support for OASIS DITA 1.0

    Support was added for the OASIS DITA 1.0 standard for DITA DTDs and schemas.

  2. Transformation to troff

    Support was added for transformation to the troff document processing system.

  3. XML catalog support

    Support was added for XML catalogs, which are logical structures containing mapping information between public IDs and URLs of DTD files. A catalog entry can be used to locate a unified resource identifier (URI) reference for 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.

  4. Topicref referring to nested topic

    The href attribute of the topicref entity was extended to quote a nested topic in a DITA file.

  5. Localization support

    Support was added to support DITA content in 20 languages, and translation of DITA keywords in the same 20 languages.

  6. Accessibility support

    Accessibility partially applied to XHTML and PDF transformations.

  7. Eclipse Content Provider support

    Release 1.1 supported the Eclipse Content Provider.

  8. Index information in HTML Help and JavaHelp

    Index information now appears in HTML Help and JavaHelp.

  9. Mapref element

    The mapref element (a specialization of the topicref element) was added to allow a reference to another ditamap file.

  10. TOC generation for Eclipse Help

    Tables of contents could be generated for Eclipse help.

  11. Helpsets supported in Java Help

    Support was added for helpsets in JavaHelp.

  12. Additional parameter support for Java commands

    Support was added for the following Java command parameters: /indexshot, /outext, /copycss, /xsl, and /tempdir.

  13. Additional parameter support for Ant scripts

    Support was added for the following Ant command parameters: .args.indexshow, args.outext, args.copycss, args.xsl, and dita.temp.dir.

Bug fixes: 7

Release 1.0.2

Release 1.0.2 was a maintenance release with 7 bug fixes and minor enhancements.

Release 1.0.1

Release 1.0.1 was a maintenance release with 11 bug fixes and minor enhancements.

Release 1.0

Release 1.0 was the initial release of the open-source version of the DITA Toolkit, which evolved from a developerWorks version.

New and enhanced features in release 1.0


  1. Java-based processing

    The Java-based processing architecture supports single-threaded execution throughout.

  2. Ant-based processing

    Release 1.0 featured Ant-based orchestration of the processing environment, from preprocessing through transformation to any required postprocessing.

  3. Conditional processing

    A preprocessor core supports conditional processing and conref resolution.

  4. Map-driven processing

    The map-driven processor generates links for transformed topics.

  5. New DITA-to-HTML transform

    A DITA-to-HTML transform that was designed for high-volume usage replaced the previous topic2html_Impl.xsl core transform.