Reply To: Use DITA audience dialogue for non dita XML topics

[Derek Read]

The software does not support the arbitrary use of DTDs with our DITA functionalty. To use the DITA functionality as is (ie: the “just works” part of my last post) you must be using one of the official DITA DTDs (XMetaL includes 100% unmodified versions from OASIS) or a specialized DITA DTD.

However, in theory, the XFT (the dialog) might be reusable for other DTDs. It is coded in a fairly generic way but I can't say if that is generic enough for use with your DTD. We have discussed documenting how to reuse this XFT and associated code with non-DITA DTDs and some experimentation has been done but there is no official documentation on how to do that. What we may do in the future is to include something like this as a sample with XMetaL Developer if we don't provide a dedicated “non-DITA” version people could launch from any customization. If you are familiar with scripting you could study the code we implement for this DITA feature (it is all JScript) and then try to reuse it with the customization you have created for your own DTD (CSS, CTM and in particular in this instance your MCR file). A script debugger might be useful so you can step through the code and see what is going on.

Reply