DITA Open Toolkit

Building your own content using the demo build

You can use the demo build to generate output for your own DITA content.

Procedure

  1. If necessary, run the startcmd file that is applicable for your operating system.
    You do not need to run the startcmd file if you already have a command-prompt or terminal window that was invoked by the startcmd file open.
  2. From the DITA-OT shell, enter the following command: 
    ant -f build_demo.xml
  3. When prompted, type the name of a map.
    You must specify the path for the DITA map. You either can specify a fully qualified file name, for example, C:\DITA-OT1.6.M5\doc\userguide.ditamap, or you can specify a relative path, for example, doc\userguide.ditamap
  4. When prompted, type the name of the output directory.
  5. When prompted, type the value for the transformation type.
    Ouput format Value
    Docbook docbook
    Eclipse help eclipse
    HTML help htmlhelp
    PDF pdf
    XHTML web
    XHTML with a JavaScript frame set tocjs
  6. When prompted, press Enter to start the transformation.

Results

The DITA-OT generates output for the specified DITA content. It runs the transformation that you specified, and writes the output to the directory that you specified.

What to do next

Explore invoking the DITA-OT from either Ant or the command-line tool. This enables you to specify a wider array of parameters than those supported by the demo build.

Using Ant or the command-line tool, you can perform the following tasks (and more):
  • Add a custom CSS file to the transformation
  • Generate labels for the sections of task topics
  • Specify that draft comments are included in the output
  • Turn on "Related link" sections in a PDF file
Parent topic: Getting Started with the DITA Open Toolkit
Previous topic: Running the demo build