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<html lang="en"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"><meta charset="UTF-8"><meta name="copyright" content="(C) Copyright 2020"><meta name="generator" content="DITA-OT"><meta name="description" content="The DITA Open Toolkit PDF transformation was originally based on a third-party contribution by Idiom Technologies, and is commonly known as the “pdf2” plug-in."><meta name="keywords" content=", info, legacypdf, PDF2, PDF, plug-in, history of, languages, auto-generated strings, PDF, HTML formatting differences, Idiom Technologies, HTML, PDF formatting differences, DITA 1.1, index, indexing domain, Customization directory, org.dita.pdf2"><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../css/commonltr.css"><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../css/dita-ot-doc.css"><title>History of the PDF transformation</title></head><body id="history-pdf-transformation"><header role="banner"><div class="header">
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<p>DITA Open Toolkit</p>
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<hr>
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</div></header><nav role="toc"><ul><li><a href="../index.html">DITA Open Toolkit 3.6</a></li><li><a href="../release-notes/index.html">Release Notes</a></li><li><a href="../topics/installing-client.html">Installing DITA-OT</a></li><li><a href="../topics/building-output.html">Building output</a></li><li><a href="../topics/input-formats.html">Authoring formats</a></li><li><a href="../topics/output-formats.html">Output formats</a></li><li><a href="../parameters/index.html">Parameters</a></li><li><a href="../topics/html-customization.html">Customizing HTML</a></li><li><a href="../topics/pdf-customization.html">Customizing PDF</a></li><li><a href="../topics/adding-plugins.html">Adding plug-ins</a></li><li><a href="../topics/custom-plugins.html">Creating plug-ins</a></li><li><a href="../topics/troubleshooting-overview.html">Troubleshooting</a></li><li><a href="../reference/index.html">Reference</a><ul><li><a href="../reference/architecture.html">DITA-OT architecture</a><ul><li><a href="../reference/processing-structure.html">Processing structure</a></li><li><a href="../reference/map-first-preprocessing.html">Map-first preprocessing</a></li><li><a href="../reference/processing-pipeline-modules.html">Processing modules</a></li><li><a href="../reference/processing-order.html">Processing order</a></li><li><a href="../reference/store-api.html">Store API</a></li><li><a href="../reference/preprocessing.html">Pre-processing modules</a></li><li><a href="../reference/html-based-processing.html">HTML-based processing modules</a></li><li><a href="../reference/pdf-transform.html">PDF processing modules</a><ul><li class="active"><a href="../reference/pdf-transformation-history.html">History of the PDF transformation</a></li></ul></li></ul></li><li><a href="../reference/dita-spec-support.html">DITA specification support</a></li><li><a href="../extension-points/plugin-extension-points.html">Extension points</a></li><li><a href="../reference/license.html">License</a></li><li><a href="../reference/glossary.html#glossary">Glossary</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="../topics/dita-and-dita-ot-resources.html">Resources</a></li></ul></nav><main role="main"><article role="article" aria-labelledby="ariaid-title1">
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<h1 class="title topictitle1" id="ariaid-title1">History of the PDF transformation</h1>
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<div class="body conbody"><p class="shortdesc">The DITA Open Toolkit PDF transformation was originally based on a third-party contribution by Idiom
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Technologies, and is commonly known as the “pdf2” plug-in.</p>
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<p class="p">When IBM developed the code that later became DITA-OT, it included only a proof-of-concept PDF transformation.
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IBM had their own processing chain for producing PDFs from SGML, which they had developed over several decades, so
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resources were focused primarily on XHTML output and preprocessing.</p>
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<p class="p">Since the initial proof-of-concept transformation was not robust enough for production-grade output, companies
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began to develop their own PDF transformations. One company, Idiom Technologies, made their transformation (known
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as the “pdf2” transformation) available as open source on 23 February 2006. The Idiom plug-in was initially
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available as a separately-downloadable plug-in that could be installed into DITA-OT.</p>
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<p class="p">Later the DITA-OT project formally incorporated the Idiom plug-in as a demonstration in the
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<span class="ph filepath">demo/fo</span> directory. Beginning with DITA-OT version 1.5, released 18 December 2009, the
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“pdf2” code served as the main, supported PDF transformation. (The original PDF transformation was deprecated and
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renamed “legacypdf”.) In DITA-OT version 1.6, the “pdf2” plug-in was moved to
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<span class="ph filepath">plugins/org.dita.pdf2</span>. </p>
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<p class="p">The fact that the current PDF transformation was not originally developed in parallel with the other core DITA-OT
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transformations led to anomalies that often confuse users:</p>
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<ul class="ul">
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<li class="li">Elements are often (by default) styled differently in the XHTML and PDF transformations. For example, consider
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the <code class="keyword markupname xmlelement"><info></code> element in a task topic. In HTML output, this is an inline element; in PDF
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output, it is a block-level element.</li>
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<li class="li">The auto-generated strings used for localization are different, and so languages that are supported by DITA-OT
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differ based on whether the XHTML or PDF transformation is used.</li>
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<li class="li">The Idiom plug-in used its own extension mechanism (the <span class="ph filepath">Customization</span> folder) to provide
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overrides to the PDF transformation.</li>
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<li class="li">Before the release of DITA 1.1 (which added support for the indexing domain), Idiom developed an index
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extension that used a FrameMaker-inspired syntax.</li>
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</ul>
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</div>
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<nav role="navigation" class="related-links"><div class="familylinks"><div class="parentlink"><strong>Parent topic:</strong> <a class="link" href="../reference/pdf-transform.html" title="The PDF (formerly known as PDF2) transformation process runs the pre-processing routine and follows it by a series of additional targets. These steps work together to create a merged set of content, convert the merged content to XSL-FO, and then format the XSL-FO file to PDF.">PDF processing modules</a></div></div></nav></article></main></body></html> |