DITA Open Toolkit

DITA Open Toolkit 1.8.4

This document describes the DITA Open Toolkit project—what the project is, and how to use the site.

What is the DITA Open Toolkit?

The DITA Open Toolkit, or DITA-OT for short, is a set of Java-based, open source tools that provide processing for DITA maps and topic content. You can download the OT and install it for free on your computer to get started with topic-based writing and publishing. The DITA-OT is licensed under the CPL 1.0 and Apache 2.0 open source licenses.

Note: While the DITA Standard itself is owned and developed by OASIS, the DITA Open Toolkit is an independent, open source implementation of the standard.

Key output formats for the toolkit include:

  • XHTML
  • PDF (formerly known as PDF2)
  • ODT (Open Document Format)
  • Eclipse Help
  • TocJS (XHTML with a JavaScript frameset)
  • HTML Help
  • Java Help
  • Eclipse Content (normalized DITA plus Eclipse project files)
  • Word RTF (with some limitations)
  • Docbook
  • Troff

Toolkit documentation

There are two primary sources for documentation about the toolkit.

Stable documentation about toolkit usage, parameters, and project management can be found on this page, using the navigation panel on the left.

New information about the latest toolkit builds, plans for the next release, and other changing information can be found on the DITA-OT landing page at the dita.xml.org site (link below). That site also contains the release notes for all upcoming and previous releases.

Shortcuts to important information