Migrating to release 2.5

In DITA-OT 2.5, several frequently-overridden legacy style settings were removed from the default PDF plug-in. A separate plug-in can be used to restore the original settings.

Note: This topic provides a summary of changes in DITA-OT 2.5 that may require modifications to custom stylesheets or plug-ins. For more information on changes in this release, see the DITA-OT 2.5 Release Notes.

Default PDF style improvements

Several legacy styles have been modified or removed in the default PDF plug-in org.dita.pdf2, including the following:

  • In task topics with only a single step, the step is now rendered as a simple block (rather than as a list item without a label).
  • Table containers now inherit the initial indentation (start-indent) from the parent elements.
  • Borders and indentation have been removed from <example> elements.
  • Links are no longer italicized.
  • Titles for related link lists have been standardized to use the common.title attribute set (which applies the sans-serif font-family) and bold font weight.
  • Several remaining occurrences of left/right borders, margins, padding, and text alignment now use the corresponding start/end equivalents to better support right-to-left languages.

External plug-in for legacy PDF styling

If you have a custom PDF plug-in that explicitly depends on the previous default settings for the aforementioned styles, the org.dita.pdf2.legacy plug-in can be used to restore the pre–2.5 styles.

Plug-in Source code location
org.dita.pdf2.legacy https://github.com/dita-ot/org.dita.pdf2.legacy

To install the legacy PDF plug-in, run the following command:

dita --install https://github.com/dita-ot/org.dita.pdf2.legacy/archive/2.5.zip
Attention: Only install the legacy PDF plug-in if you have a custom PDF plug-in that requires the pre–2.5 styles. If your plug-in was designed for DITA-OT 2.4 and does not override these settings, there is no need to install the legacy PDF plug-in.