The DITA Open Toolkit is the most commonly used engine for publishing DITA
content to various output formats. It has a plugin-based architecture and it comes bundled by
default with plugins for publishing to XHTML-based and PDF formats. There are
other useful open-source plugins that can be installed in the DITA Open Toolkit and
provide various publishing or reporting capabilities. Below is a list of my favorite open
source plugins, many of which are bundled by default with Oxygen XML Editor:
DITA to MS Word
This very useful plugin developed by Jarno Elovirta (the main DITA OT developer) can
be used to publish DITA to MS Word (OOXML): https://github.com/jelovirt/com.elovirta.ooxml.
The plugin is robust and can handle large DITA projects.
Convert MS Word to DITA
The DITA For Publishers project developed by
Eliot Kimber contains a plugin that can convert MS Word (OOXML) documents to
DITA topics: http://www.dita4publishers.org/d4p-users-guide/user_docs/d4p-users-guide/word2dita/word-to-dita-plugin.html. Useful advice and other ways to migrate from MS
Word to DITA can be found here: How to Migrate from Word to DITA.
DITA to EPUB
The DITA For Publishers project developed by
Eliot Kimber contains a plugin that can convert DITA content to
EPUB3: http://www.dita4publishers.org/d4p-users-guide/user_docs/d4p-users-guide/epub-plugin/generating-epubs.html. There are also plugins that can take the EPUB3
output and generate Kindle or Mobi formats.
Use Markdown content directly in DITA Maps
This plugin developed by Jarno Elovirta can be used to publish hybrid DITA projects
containing both DITA and Markdown topics to any output format: https://github.com/jelovirt/org.lwdita.
Embed video and audio resources in DITA topics
This handy little plugin developed by Oxygen allows you to embed audio, video,
or YouTube resources in DITA topics and properly display the embedded content in the
XHTML-based outputs: https://github.com/oxygenxml/dita-media-support.
Publish RelaxNG-based DITA topics
RelaxNG is the default schema type in which the DITA vocabulary is
described by the specification developers. But the DITA Open Toolkit does not
allow publishing RNG-based DITA content by default. Installing this plugin
developed by Oxygen will make this possible: https://github.com/oxygenxml/dita-relaxng-defaults.
Present Oxygen track changes in the PDF output
This useful plugin developed by Oxygen allows you to preserve Oxygen
change tracking highlights in the PDF output: https://github.com/oxygenxml/dita-classic-pdf-review.
Publish DITA to PDF using CSS
The difficult thing about the default PDF output is the customization that involves
modifying XSLT scripts and requiring knowledge of both XSLT and XSL-FO. This
plugin developed by Oxygen allows you to use CSS to customize the PDF
obtained from DITA content: https://github.com/oxygenxml/dita-css. The plugin needs a commercial license of RenderX
XEP or Antenna House in order to produce the PDF: https://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/ug-editor/topics/ditamap-pdf-css-html5-2.html. But for Oxygen XML Editor 19, we are actively
working on a PDF CSS engine (called Chemistry) that will allow the plugin to
work from Oxygen without any additional licenses: http://archive.xmlprague.cz/2017/files/presentations/css2pdf-xslfo.pdf.
A list with all open-source DITA OT plugins developed and shared by Oxygen XML
Editor can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/search?q=topic%3Adita-ot-plugin+org%3Aoxygenxml&type=Repositories. My DITA OT Day 2016 presentation covers
most of these: https://www.oxygenxml.com/events/2016/dita-ot_day.html#Seven_Open-Source_DITA-OT_plugins.
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