How to use generated attribute specialization?

Fox32 commented 11 years ago

I'm tring to use the attribute specialization generator but I can't get it to work. I don't think that it is an issue with your generator - I think it's more a misunderstanding on my side. This is what I have done so far:

Used the Attribute Specialization Generator to create a attribute named mytest
Unzipped the folder into the DITA-OT 1.8 plugins directory
Executed ant -f integrator.xml
Created a dita map with a dita file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
<topic id="test_topic" audience="expert">
  <title>Test Topic</title>
  <body>
    <p>
      Hello World!
    </p>
    <note mytest="blub">Note!</note>
  </body>
</topic>

Executed ant -Dtranstype=xhtml -args.input=test.ditamap, I would expect that an output is generated but instead I get an error:

 [gen-list] [DOTJ013E][ERROR] Failed to parse the referenced file 'topic_test.dita'. 
The XML parser reported the following error:

 [gen-list] topic_test.dita Line 9:Attribute "mytest" must be declared for element type
 "note".

Did I forget a step while integrating the plugin? My goal is to filter the output with a ditaval file.

Thanks for your help!

jelovirt commented 11 years ago

In order to use attribute domains, you need a shell DTD that contains them. Instead of creating an attribute specialization, create a shell DTD and define your new attributes there. Then, install the plug-in into DITA-OT and write your documents using the new shell DTD. The generator should probably create a README file into the plug-in ZIP to instruct people on how to use the new shell.

Fox32 commented 11 years ago

Thanks for your help! That works as expected.

An alternative to a readme file would be more informations on the last page of the gerneration steps. Or add a additional page at the end. It should contain infos about:

Where to put the file (this one is easy)
That you need to run ant -f integrator.xml (or not, should happend automatically on every build?)
What you need to change in your topic to access the changed shell dtd, like the DOCTYPE.

You solved my problem, but I leave this open as a feature request.

jelovirt / dita-generator

How to use generated attribute specialization? #21