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The conversion process

Several steps are needed in order to interpret the XML and convert it into HTML in strict observance of DITA specification.

First conversion

In a first conversion sequence, DITA-OT will use the DITA-OT ishditadelivery plugin created by SDL to transform XML into HTML. This DITA-OT ishditadelivery plugin uses parts of the standard DITA-OT xhtml plugin, but extends it.

For example, for a publish to Dynamic Delivery:
  • We aimed at conservation of conditions on the resulting HTML. The purpose is to provide dynamic conditioning for the reader to use (selecting condition options that hides/displays part of the content on the web site).
    • Whenever possible, the ishcondition attribute is maintained on tandhe HTML element.
    • When an element does not produce HTML output, we create a <tcdl:If> element.
  • We converted the table of contents (TOC) to an intermediate format.
  • We removed the DOCTYPE declaration on the HTML pages.
  • We added a back of book index.
Second conversion

A second conversion is operated for some output formats, for example the Dynamic Delivery and Content Delivery output formats. For the other output formats, the first conversion produces the result file that can directly be packaged in the concluding step.

Here are the additional content transformations for the Dynamic Delivery output format:
  • TOC and back of book index are converted to a final format.
  • Filenames in <a href=“GUID.xml”> in TOC, index and XHTML pages are replaced with <tcdl:Link ref=“unique CD identifier”>.
  • ishcondition attributes are turned to <tcdl:If> elements.
  • Extraction of some useful information from the content file in order to add it in the metadata file
Conclusion

The result of the conversion process is used in the packaging/compressing steps. A compression is performed only for some output formats. The packages are then uploaded to the delivery database.