Before you begin
XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) requires the
Sun or Apple Java™ runtime 1.5 or above.
On
Unix, make sure that the Java bin/ directory is
referenced in the $PATH and, at the same time, check that the
Java runtime in the $PATH has the right version:
$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_16"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_16-b01)
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 14.2-b01, mixed mode)
On Windows
and on the Mac, this verification is in principle not needed as the
java executable is automatically found in the
$PATH when Java has been properly installed.
Procedure
- Unzip the distribution in any directory you want.
C:\> mkdir ditac
C:\> cd ditac
C:\ditac> unzip ditac-1_2_0.zip
C:\ditac> dir ditac-1_2_0
... <DIR> bin
... <DIR> doc
... <DIR> docsrc
...
XMLmind DITA Converter is intended to be used directly
from the
ditac-1_2_0/ directory. That is, you can
run the
ditac command by simply executing (in a
Command Prompt on windows, a terminal on Unix):
C:\ditac> ditac-1_2_0\bin\ditac
- Depending the output formats you want to generate, you'll need to
download and install third-party external tools.
-
If you want to generate PDF or PostScript®, download and
install
Apache
FOP 
.
-
If you want to generate RTF (can be opened in Word
2000+), WordprocessingML (can be opened in Word 2003+), Office Open
XML (
.docx, can be opened in Word 2007+) or OpenOffice
(
.odt, can be opened in OpenOffice.org 2+), you need to
purchase
XMLmind
XSL-FO Converter . Note that
XMLmind XSL-FO Converter Personal Edition is
free to use.
-
If you want to generate HTML Help, download and install
the
HTML Help Workshop (contains
hhc.exe).
-
If you want to generate Java Help, download and install
Java Help (contains
jhindexer and
jhindexer.bat).
- If you have installed any of the above external tools, you need
now to instruct ditac where to find them. This can be done using the
following command line options: -fop,
-xep,
-xfc,
-jhindexer,
-hhc.
However, it is much more convenient to specify these command-line
options once for all in a
ditac.options file.
- Create ditac.options, a plain text file
encoded using the native encoding of the platform (e.g.
Windows-1252 on a Western Windows PC), in the ditac user
preferences directory.
The ditac user
preferences directory is:
-
$HOME/.ditac/
on Linux.
-
$HOME/Library/Application
Support/XMLmind/ditac/ on the Mac.
-
%APPDATA%\XMLmind\ditac\
on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7.
Example:
C:\Documents and Settings\john\Application
Data\XMLmind\ditac\ on Windows 2000 and XP.
C:\Users\john\AppData\Roaming\XMLmind\ditac\
on Windows Vista and 7.
- Add the equivalent of a command-line option for each external
tool installed in the preceding step. Use one or more newline
characters to separate the options. More information in The
ditac.options file.
-fop E:\opt\fop-0.95\fop.bat
-xfc E:\opt\xfc_perso_java-4_3_1\bin\fo2rtf.bat
-jhindexer E:\opt\javahelp\javahelp\bin\jhindexer.bat
-hhc "C:\Program Files\HTML Help Workshop\hhc.exe"
