OK, I sort of messed up my description of how to make a PDF in my last post. Here is what you do, and then I'll get into the current problems with the PDF:
1. Transform the dita files to one merged dita file using the wacky topicmerge.xsl file. The command I used is: saxon -o getstartmerge.ditamap -w1 "gettingstartedguide/getstartderby.ditamap" "xsl/topicmerge.xsl" Remember to have the xsl files from the dita package available to saxon. 2. Take the resulting merged dita file (getstartmerge.ditamap) and move it to your FOP install directory. Make sure to also have the xsl directory from the dita package in your FOP install directory. Finally, copy the gsconrefs.dita file to the FOP install directory as well, as FOP will need to refer to it to grab the names within it. 3. Run the following command in FOP: fop -xml getstartmerge.ditamap -xsl xsl/dita2fo_shell.xsl -pdf getstart.pdf This creates your PDF! An ugly PDF, but a PDF nonetheless. I'd recommend creating batch files for these commands as well to make things easy. OK, so on to the issues. Besides the issues I mentioned previously in the html transforms, we have additional issues in the PDF transform (note that the parent-child linking issue is not as important in a PDF, but would be nice to have, and will probably be more crucial in the longer books). 1. Cover page: There is none. 2. No Table of Contents 3. None of the links work. Links display topic id's instead of the title of the linked topic. 4. No index I should add that the html transforms produced no index either. That is common to both the html and pdf transforms. So once again, we need to tweak these xsl files somewhat. But at least we can get from A to Z, although we're skipping some letters on the way... On a note unrelated to PDF transforms, is anyone curious yet about making an Eclipse plugin from the output of xhtml and the xml nav tree? I hesitate to post the process I followed for it now, because I feel we have enough to discuss already without adding that to the fold. But if anyone wants to move to that now, just let me know and I'd be happy to share my experience with you.
