Demystifying DITA to PDF Publishing

Sarah O'KeefeScriptorium Publishing

Housekeeping

Slides and some demo files available after the presentation; email me.I will have several question breaks.Please ask questions.Emphasis will be on Open Toolkit and InDesign; no extensive FrameMaker demo.

The five stages of DITA-based PDF publishing

“How hard could it be?”“Why is this so $#@!$#@ hard??”“Maybe I can get this to work with different tools/people...”“At least I got our logo on the front page and nobody knows that I did this.”“It looks adequate and it publishes in seconds.”

PDF publishing is hard because:

Printed page layouts have more options than HTML layouts.Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects (XSL-FO) needs to support sophisticated page layout options.Pushing XML into page layout tools is challenging.Automation means giving up page-by-page formatting.

Please choose one of the following terrifying options:

DITA Open ToolkitPage-based layout tool

FrameMakerInDesignQuark

Help authoring/conversion toolRoboHelpePublisher ProFlare?

What are your PDF priorities?

For typography, choose InDesign or similar.For automation, choose the DITA Open Toolkit.For a middle ground, choose FrameMaker.

Lower your standards.

Does your audience care about fine typography?Less copyfitting = greater automation

What about the help authoring tools?

Yes, if you need cross-browser, cross-platform help.Not the best choice for PDF only.

PDF through the DITA Open Toolkit

Very difficult to configureNo “tweaking” to fix copyfitting problemsAlmost certainly the long-term winner

DITA Open Toolkit process

Install the DITA OT (!)JavaAntXSL processorXSL-FO processor

Modify XSL-FO files to get the output you wantGenerate PDF from the command line

DITA Open Toolkit challenges

FontsFormattingFoggy FOFOP foibles

DITA Open Toolkit demo

Questions about DITA Open Toolkit?

PDF via FrameMaker

Configuration requires modifying a formatting templateNice PDFCan tweak to adjust pagination

FrameMaker process

Modify the template to meet your requirementsOpen the map file(v8 and earlier) Generate intermediate bookSave as PDF

Only sort of fake FrameMaker demo

FrameMaker pitfalls

Sensitive to whitespaceDITA specializationsRound-trippingAuthoring

FrameMaker recommendations

Use DITA-FMx plug-in

Questions about FrameMaker?

PDF via InDesign

Beautiful typographyCan tweak to adjust paginationNo default support for DITAExtensive configuration requiredWhitespace in XML results in anaphylactic shock for InDesign

InDesign process

Transform DITA content into “InDesign-friendly” XML via XSLT

Flatten map filesResolve and flatten content references (conrefs)Modify structure of images and tablesControl whitespaceDo something about xrefs with InDesign scripts

Set up template in InDesignImport modified XML into InDesign

InDesign challenges

Extensive preprocessingRound-trippingAuthoringWhitespace

Questions about InDesign?

Factors to consider

Platform requirementsTechnical resourcesTypography requirementsVelocityVolumeVersioning

Questions