Avoid "dita-css" and "bidi-dita-css" in XMetaL Author Enterprise 5.5 and earlier

[Derek Read]

Note: this user interface issue was resolved with the XMetaL Author Enterprise 6.0 release.

In XMetaL Author Enterprise 5.5 and earlier releases two bogus settings are exposed in the Edit Deliverable Type dialog for the “Multiple HTML files” deliverable type (outlined in red in screen capture). You get to this dialog by clicking the Edit button after selecting Multiple HTML files in the Configure Output dialog.

Setting either of these to any value will result in one of the following (correct but 'fatal') errors being thrown by the DITA OT when generating any output based on HTML (including CHM, Eclipse and Java help). The DITA OT stops processing on fatal errors so output will probably fail in this case.

org.dita.dost.exception.DITAOTException: [DOTJ002F][FATAL] Unsupported parameter '/dita-css'. Please refer to User Guide for supported parameters.

org.dita.dost.exception.DITAOTException: [DOTJ002F][FATAL] Unsupported parameter '/bidi-dita-css'. Please refer to User Guide for supported parameters.

To resolve this issue simply avoid using these settings. They never properly mapped to valid parameters supported by the DITA OT (so you're not missing anything) and have been removed for our 6.0 release. The remaining five settings in that grouping (still exposed in the 6.0 release) map to the following proper DITA OT parameters:

Label in the XMetaL “Edit Deliverable Type” dialog	Parameter passed to the DITA OT	Description from DITA OT
Specific CSS	/css	specify user css file
Default CSS path	/csspath	specify the path for css reference
Page metadata (HDF)	/hdf	specify the file to be placed in the HEAD area
Page header (HDR)	/hdr	specify the file to be placed in the BODY running-heading area
Page footer (FTR)	/ftr	specify the file to be placed in the BODY running-footing area

Any other settings supported by the DITA OT but not exposed through our UI can be passed to the DITA OT using the “Other output parameters” section on the Advanced tab for a given deliverable, using the following format:

ANT_PARAM_args.  = 

…where you would replace with the proper DITA OT parameter's name, and with a supported value.

For example, because we don't expose a setting for the parameter “copycss” in our interface (wouldn't that be nice?) in 6.0 and earlier versions, in order to have a CSS file you specified using the “Specific CSS” setting (which is in the interface) copied to the output folder you need to add the following to the parameters in the “Other parameters” section:
ANT_PARAM_args.copycss  =  yes

Following are some additional parameters, supported by the DITA OT and related to HTML outputs,  that you may wish to use:

Specify this in “Other output parameters”	Parameter passed to the DITA OT	Description from DITA OT	Additional Notes
ANT_PARAM_args.cssroot  =	/cssroot	specify the root directory for user specified css file
ANT_PARAM_args.outext  =	/outext	specify the output file extension for generated xhtml files. Default is “.html”	XMetaL exposes the values “htm” and “html”, but perhaps you want something else, like “asp”, etc…
ANT_PARAM_args.xhtmltoc  =	/xhtmltoc	specify the root file name of the output xhtml toc file in xhtml transformation

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