Version 1.5.3 contains many enhancements, user patches, bug fixes, and significant updates to the documentation.

Release 1.5.3 was developed using a series of test builds released to the community every three weeks. Each item in the list below indicates which test build first contained the update. The eighth public build was the final build, released as the DITA-OT 1.5.3 final stable build.

Base plug-ins

In earlier releases of OT, configuration parameters were hardcoded into Ant files and Java code. Starting from version 1.5.3 OT has externalized base configurations into base plug-ins in plugins folder. Base plug-in identifiers and folder names start with org.dita:

• org.dita.base
• org.dita.docbook
• org.dita.eclipsecontent
• org.dita.eclipsehelp
• org.dita.htmlhelp
• org.dita.javahelp
• org.dita.odt
• org.dita.pdf
• org.dita.troff
• org.dita.wordrtf
• org.dita.xhtml

For backwards compatibility, only configuration files were moved to plug-in folders, the actual code and resource files were left in original locations.

Installations of OT may remove base plug-ins in order to remove funtionality, but the org.dita.base plug-in must be retained as it contains configuration for base functionality such as catalog files and preprocessing.

Plug-ing configuration changes

The plug-in configuration file plugin.xml has support for new syntax, where the old

<feature extension="foo" value="bar.xml" type="file"/>

can be written as

<feature extension="foo" file="bar.xml"/>

The new file attribute only supports a single file, not a comma separated list like the value attribute.

In previous releases multiple feature elements with the same extension ID were not supported. In release 1.5.3 multiple definitions are combined, thus

<feature extension="foo" value="bar,baz"/>

can also be written as

<feature extension="foo" value="bar"/> <feature extension="foo" value="baz"/>

Plug-in extension points can be added with

<extension-point id="extension-id" name="human readable name"/>

Plug-ins should declare all extension points they support. In version 1.5.3 undeclared extension points are supported, but a warning is thrown when running integration in verbose mode. Support for undeclared extension points may be removed in future releases.

PDF2 changes

Support for the format attribute in PDF2 variable files has been remove as redundant. The same functionality as

<variable id="foo" format="bar">baz</variable>

can be implemented with e.g.

<variable id="foo.bar">baz</variable>

PDF2 no longer logs a warning about PDF2 plug-in replacing the legacy PDF transformation type.

Support for flagging has been added.

Version of FOP that comes with Full Easy Install has been updated from 0.95 to 1.0.

Filtering configuration

List of transtypes which are considered to be print types has been moved to integrator.properties with the property name print_transtypes. In previous releases this list was hardcoded into Java code. Configuring print transtypes is currently not possible in plug-in configuration files.

Java API changes

Multiple Java classes have been changed from public non-final into package-private final. This enables clearer distinction between public and internal API, and forbits subclassing classes which have not been designed and documented for extensibility.

1. 3177971 Improve plugin configuration file (Milestone 2)
2. 3178275 Add xsl:import extension point to PDF2 topic merge XSL (Milestone 3)
3. 3182113 Add common attribute processing to PDF2 plugin (Milestone 3)
4. 3185914 Improve integration loggin (Milestone 3)
5. 3189073 Plugin location should be available as Ant property (Milestone 3)
6. 3126848 Repository cleanup (Milestone 3)
7. 3204188 Support for defining extension point (Milestone 4)
8. 3213163 Clean PDF2 build and integration scripts (Milestone 4)
9. 3227387 Need extension to pass user param to dita.map.xhtml.toc targ (Milestone 4)
10. 3231695 Use an XML serializer object for writing XML (Milestone 4)
11. 3256796 Remove lecagy PDF code from xsl (Milestone 4)
12. 3283638 Remove format attribute support from PDF2 vars (Milestone 5)
13. 3285716 Clean up PDF2 build files (Milestone 5)
14. 3286085 Add output and temp dir params to PDF2 (Milestone 5)
15. 3293738 Use extensible pipeline task implementation (Milestone 6)
16. 3271552 ${args.xsl.pdf} as an absolut path not supported (Milestone 6)
17. 3033000 update to Apache FOP 1.0 release (Milestone 6)
18. 3213324 Separate FOP/XEP/AXF stylesheets in PDF2 (Milestone 6)
19. 3302779 Dependency extension points for PDF2 formatting (Milestone 7)
20. 3304945 Allow setting local overrides with properties file (Milestone 7)
21. 3190356 Pluginize DITA-OT base configuration files (Milestone 8)
22. 3167087 Reduce static variable usage in Java code (Milestone 8)
23. 3158929 Java clean-up (Milestone 8)
24. 3194917 Change Java API to be more final and non-public (Milestone 8)
25. 3197328 Refactor writers for cleaner XML serialization (Milestone 8)
26. 3199755 Improve log integration (Milestone 8)
27. 3296040 Refactor PDF2 build files (Milestone 8)
28. 3306146 PDF2 stylesheet refactoring (Milestone 8)
29. 3304447 Add support for selecting output format in PDF2 (Milestone 8)
30. 3310476 Add plug-in ID and version syntax check (Milestone 8)
31. 3309275 Warning reported by Apache FOP on any topic (Milestone 8)
32. 3305843 Support list of tables/figures in PDF2 (Milestone 8)

1. 3123507 String concat in map2plugin (Milestone 1)
2. 3110513 HTML XSLT uses complex casts (Milestone 1)
3. 3097677 Add property to reload XHTML stylesheets (Milestone 1)
4. 3106659 Added topicgroup elements to tocjs (Milestone 1)
5. 3109051 RestoreEntity duplicates functionality (Milestone 1)
6. 3107755 Configure templates with integrator properties (Milestone 1)
7. 3142967 IndexTermReader leaves tab characters in terms (Milestone 1)
8. 3140543 Add missing Commons Codec JAR into compile classpath for buildPackage.xml (Milestone 1)
9. 3087664 Clean plugin configuration parser (Milestone 1)
10. 3145258 Plug-in integrator code clean-up (Milestone 2)
11. 3147226 Use common directory layout for Junit (Milestone 2)
12. 3062765 Fix unit test file paths to be platform dependent (Milestone 2)
13. 3164523 Refactor platform Java code (Milestone 2)
14. 3160801 Improve unit test coverage (Milestone 8)
15. 3189026 Avoid strings where other types are more appropriate (Milestone 8)

1. 3114411 keyref links don't work for HTML Help (Milestone 1)
2. 3126578 Chunking Issues in DITA 1.5.1 (Milestone 1)
3. 3109616 More Antenna House Path Problems (Milestone 1)
4. 3155375 Incorrect way to specify recognized image extensions(Milestone 2)
5. 3157890 Navtitle Construction Does not Preserve Markup (Milestone 2)
6. 3155848 xml decl in ditaval file not closed properly (Milestone 2)
7. 3162808 Chunking remaps in-file <xref> to invalid value (Milestone 2)
8. 3164866 Upper letter estensions (Milestone 2)
9. 3165307 Add boilerplate to Java files (Milestone 2)
10. 2793836 CHM Index terms come out with extra spaces (Milestone 2)
11. 3165762 Initializer XMLReader without modifying system variables (Milestone 2)
12. 3175328 Imagemap alt text gets extra text (Milestone 2)
13. 3085106 FO: topicmerge drops id on map/topicref without href. (Milestone 2)
14. 3147328 Error in commons.xsl: getTopicrefShortdesc (Milestone 2)
15. 3130724 Error in tables.xsl: fix-relcolwidth (Milestone 2)
16. 3174906 Normalize Map and Bookmap titles for JavaHelp output (Milestone 3)
17. 3178361 Conkeyref push fails when equivalent conref push succeeds (Milestone 3)
18. 3180681 PDF2: Inconsistent template import / include. (Milestone 3)
19. 3191701 Conref Push to Same File Fails (Milestone 3)
20. 3191704 Push Replace Results in Pushed element Being removed (Milestone 3)
21. 3189883 MapLinksReader should not be namespace aware (Milestone 3)
22. 3164587 Warnings issued by Saxon 9.3.0.4 when publishing to PDF (Milestone 3)
23. 3159001 Clean unit tests (Milestone 4)
24. 3199985 @chunk : xrefs and links break (Milestone 4)
25. 3206158 Inconsistent message DOTJ038W (Milestone 4)
26. 3206373 Better handling of referenced SVG images (Milestone 4)
27. 3279539 Out of memory error from move-meta module (Milestone 5)
28. 3281108 Fallback to $locale when xml:lang value is wrong format (Milestone 5)
29. 3286679 ODT output transform deletes too many files (Milestone 6)
30. 3287609 Chunking rewrites image based on map directory (Milestone 6)
31. 3288639 Conref code improperly generalizes map domain elements (Milestone 6)
32. 3294295 PDF2 indexing and I18N fails with missing languages (Milestone 6)
33. 3294864 tocjs-demo: tocjs.ditamap is referencing a missing file (Milestone 6)
34. 3297930 PDF2: axf specific templates can't be overridden. (Milestone 7)
35. 2001271 DITA-OT documentation wants Ant 1.6.5 (Milestone 8)
36. 3136773 Incorrect version reported in log file (Milestone 8)
37. 3260746 Topichead not processed the same as title-only topic (Milestone 8)
38. 3315029 Garbled character problem in Japanese HTMLHelp (Milestone 8)
39. 3308775 Keyref map in grandparent folder fails (Milestone 8)