The DITA Open Toolkit, or dita-ot, is an open-source

Open-source software

Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...

 publishing system for publishing DITA

Darwin Information Typing Architecture

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an OASIS standard XML data model for authoring and publishing. Many third party tools support authoring, including Adobe FrameMaker, XMetaL, Arbortext, Quark XML Author, Oxygen XML Editor, easyDITA, and SDL Xopus...

 content to multiple formats. It was developed by IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

, and released as a public standard in 2001, along with DITA.

The dita-ot reference implementation

Reference implementation

In the software development process, a reference implementation is the standard from which all other implementations, with their attendant customizations, are measured, and to which all improvements are added...

 uses Ant

Apache Ant

Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes. It is similar to Make but is implemented using the Java language, requires the Java platform, and is best suited to building Java projects....

 and Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

.

The dita-ot can be extended to produce arbitrary output formats. Out of the box, it produces:

• PDF, through XSL-FO
• XHTML
  XHTML
  XHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....
  
  
• Microsoft Compiled HTML Help
• Eclipse
  Eclipse (software)
  Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment and an extensible plug-in system...
  
   Help
• JavaHelp
  JavaHelp
  JavaHelp refers to both an application and a format for online help files that can be displayed by the JavaHelp browser. It is written in Java, and is mainly used in Java applications...
  
  
• Oracle
  Oracle database
  The Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....
  
   Help
• Rich Text Format
  Rich Text Format
  The Rich Text Format is a proprietary document file format with published specification developed by Microsoft Corporation since 1987 for Microsoft products and for cross-platform document interchange....
  
  

Some DITA authoring tools and CMSs, such as Oxygen XML Editor

Oxygen XML Editor

The Oxygen XML Editor is a multi-platform XML editor, XSLT/XQuery debugger and profiler with Unicode support. It is a Java application, so it can run in Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It also has a version that can run as an Eclipse plugin.- XML editing features :Oxygen XML offers a number of...

, XMetaL

XMetaL

XMetaL, or XMetaL Author, is a software application used for creating and editing documents in XML and SGML. It has some features common to word processors, but is a native XML editor that can be configured to work with various standard and custom DTDs and XML Schema...

, Arbortext, and Syntext Serna

Syntext Serna

Syntext Serna is a WYSIWYG XML editor from Syntext, Inc. Syntext Serna works on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Sun Solaris/SPARC.- XML editing features :...

 now integrate the dita-ot, or parts of it, into their publishing workflows.

Standalone tools have also been developed to run the DITA OT via a graphical user interface

Graphical user interface

In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

instead of the command line.

External links

• http://dita.xml.org
• SourceForge page on the DITA OT
• Don Day's Resources Page for the DITA OT
• DITA Open Toolkit User Guide
• Download page for the DITA OT
• DITA Users - a member organization with workspace folders and online version of the DITA Open Toolkit
• PHP debugging tools for the DITA OT
• DITA Infocenter - DITA OT User Guide in online help format