Converting a custom character style to an XHTML element (possibly having specific attributes) is simple and does not require writing a XED script. Suffice for that to pass parameter inlines.convert to the Edit step.
Example 1: convert text spans having a “Code” character style to XHTML element code:
-p edit.inlines.convert "c-Code code"
Notice that the name of character style in the generated XHTML+CSS file is always prefixed by “c-“.
The syntax for the value of parameter inlines.convert is:
value → conversion [ S ‘!’ S conversion ]* conversion → style_spec S XHTML_element_name [ S attribute ]* style_spec → style_name | style_pattern style_pattern → ‘/’ pattern ’/’ | ‘^’ pattern ‘$’ attribute → attribute_name ‘=’ quoted_attribute_value quoted_attribute_value → “’” value “’” | ‘”’ value ‘”’
Example 2: in addition to what’s done in above example 1, convert text spans having a “Abbrev” character style to XHTML element abbr having a title=”???” attribute:
-p edit.inlines.convert "c-Code code ! c-Abbrev abbr title='???'"
What if the semantic XHTML created by the Edit step is then converted to DITA or DocBook by the means of a Transform step?
In the case of XHTML elements code and abbr, there is nothing else to do because the stock XSLT stylesheets already support these elements:
w2x_install_dir/xslt/topic.xslt converts XHTML code to DITA codeph and XHTML abbr to DITA keyword,w2x_install_dir/xslt/docbook.xslt converts XHTML code to DocBook code and XHTML abbr to DocBook abbrev.The general case which also requires using custom XSLT stylesheets is explained in section The general case.