DITA Open Toolkit

Installing the minimal or standard package on Windows

If you already have locally-installed copies of Ant and the other required tools, install either the minimal or standard package.

Before you begin

Ensure that you have the following prerequisite software installed:
  • Ant, version 1.7.1 or later
  • Java runtime environment or development kit, version 6 or later
  • XSLT processor. You can use either Saxon, version 9.1 or later, or Xalan-J, version 2.7.1 or later.

In addition, determine the specific DITA-OT transformations that you intend to support and ensure that you have the prerequisite software installed for them.

For more information, see Prerequisite software and Tested platforms and tools.

Procedure

  1. Download the minimal or standard package from SourceForge.
    Package File name
    Minimal DITA-OT1.8.4_minimal_bin.zip
    Standard DITA-OT1.8.4_standard_bin.zip
    For production use, we recommend that you use the latest stable release.
  2. Extract the contents of the package into an installation directory.
    For example, C:\pkg\DITA-OT1.8.4.
  3. Verify that the JAVA_HOME environment variable is set. 
    set JAVA_HOME=<JRE_dir>
  4. Verify that the ANT_HOME environment variable is set. 
    set ANT_HOME=<Ant_dir>
  5. Verify that the PATH environment variable includes the Java and Ant executable files. 
    set PATH=%JAVA_HOME%\bin;%ANT_HOME%\bin;%PATH%
  6. Set the DITA_HOME environment variable to point to the DITA-OT installation directory. 
    set DITA_HOME=<DITA-OT_dir>
  7. Set up the CLASSPATH environment variable. 
    set CLASSPATH=%DITA_HOME%\lib\dost.jar;%CLASSPATH%
set CLASSPATH=%DITA_HOME%\lib;%CLASSPATH%
set CLASSPATH=%DITA_HOME%\lib\resolver.jar;%CLASSPATH%
set CLASSPATH=%DITA_HOME%\lib\commons-codec-1.4.jar;%CLASSPATH%
  8. Optional: If you use Ant, version 1.8 or later, set up the CLASSPATH environment variable to include Apache Xerces. 
    set CLASSPATH=<xerces_dir>\xercesImpl.jar;<xerces_dir>\xml-apis.jar;%CLASSPATH%
  9. Set up the XSLT processor:
    Processor Action
    Saxon
    Set up the CLASSPATH environment variable to include the Saxon JAR files, for example:
    set CLASSPATH=<saxon_dir>\saxon9.jar;<saxon_dir>\saxon9-dom.jar;%CLASSPATH%
    Set up the ANT_OPTS environment variable, for example: 
    set ANT_OPTS=%ANT_OPTS% -Djavax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory=net.sf.saxon.TransformerFactoryImpl
    Xalan Set up the CLASSPATH environment variable to include the Xalan JAR files, for example: 
    set CLASSPATH=<xalan_dir>\xalan.jar;%CLASSPATH%
  10. Optional: For index processing, set up ICU for Java. 
    set CLASSPATH=<icu4j_dir>\icu4j.jar;%CLASSPATH%
  11. Optional: For JavaHelp, set the JHHOME environment variable. 
    set JHHOME=<javahelp_dir>
  12. Optional: For HTML Help, add the installation directory for the HTML Help Workshop to the local.properties file as the hhc.dir property. 
    hhc.dir=C:\\Program Files (x86)\\HTML Help Workshop
  13. Optional: For PDF output, set up the XSL-FO processor:
    Processor Action
    FOP
    Add the FOP installation directory to the local.properties file as the fop.home property, for example:
    fop.home=C:\\Program Files\\fop
    RenderX Add the RenderX installation directory to the local.properties file as the xep.dir property, for example:
    xep.dir=C:\\Program Files\\xep
    Antenna House Add the AH Formatter installation directory to the local.properties file as the axf.path property, for example:
    axf.path=C:\\Program Files\\AHFormatterV6
  14. Test the DITA-OT installation by transforming the sample files.
    The samples\ant_sample directory contains Ant scripts designed to build various output formats.
    C:\DITA-OT1.8.4>ant -f samples\ant_sample\sample_all.xml
    The generated output is written to the DITA-dir\out\samples directory. The following output formats are generated:
    • Docbook
    • Eclipse help
    • HTML Help
    • ODT
    • JavaHelp
    • PDF
    • TocJS
    • TROFF
    • XHTML
Parent topic: Installing the DITA Open Toolkit