Installing DITA Open Toolkit

The DITA-OT distribution package can be installed on Linux, macOS, and Windows. It contains everything that you need to run the toolkit except for Java.

Before you begin

Ensure that you have a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) or Java Development Kit (JDK).
DITA-OT is designed to run on Java version 8u101 or later and built and tested with the Open Java Development Kit (OpenJDK). Compatible Java distributions are available from multiple sources:
- You can download the Oracle JRE or JDK from oracle.com/technetwork/java under commercial license.
- OpenJDK is a free open-source implementation of Java available from adoptopenjdk.net.
- Free OpenJDK distributions are also available from other vendors, including Amazon Corretto, Azul Zulu, and Red Hat.
If you want to generate HTML Help, ensure that you have HTML Help Workshop installed.
You can download the Help Workshop from msdn.microsoft.com.

Procedure

Download the dita-ot-3.6.zip package from the project website at dita-ot.org/download.
Extract the contents of the package to the directory where you want to install DITA-OT.
Add the absolute path for the bin folder of the DITA-OT installation directory to the PATH environment variable.

Tip: This defines the necessary environment variable that allows the dita command to be run from any location on the file system without typing the path to the command.