Integrating DITA 4 Publishers Plugins

[roisterboy]

Hi,
We are currently on XMetal 6.0.2.070 and want to convert DITA to EPUB. I know this functionality is not supported by 6.0; however, we need to find a solution before XMetal 7.0 is released, which will support DITA to EPUB conversions.

We would like to know how to integrate the DITA 4 Publishers plugins (http://dita4publishers.sourceforge.net/) into the DITA OT so it will enable us to select DITA to EPUB as an output. I have spent hours trying to integrate the plugins, but cannot get ANT to run integrator.xml.

Any help is much appreciated!! Thank you so much!!

[Derek Read]

From the dita4publishers docs: "The Toolkit plugins are intended for use with the 1.5 version of the Open Toolkit but may work with the 1.4.3 version."

The DITA OT included with your version of XMetaL Author Enterprise is 1.4.2.1. We have not tried to integrate dita4publishers with it as the plan for 7.0 was to move to a newer version of the OT. We have been successful integrating it into the current version of the DITA OT that we will be including with our 7.0 release.

I will check with the developer in charge of doing that work to see if he knows of any particular pain points in trying to integrate it into previous releases of the OT. However, there are significant architectural changes between OT 1.4.2 / 1.4.3 and 1.5 so I would not be surprised that it (the plug-in itself) might need to be altered to work in pre-1.5 releases.

You may wish to ask the developers of dita4publishers to see if they have actually tried it with 1.4.3 and were successful. However, keep in mind that 1.4.3 is also not 1.4.2.1.