Generating XHTML with navigation

The toolkit ships with several varieties of XHTML output, each of which follows roughly the same path through the processing pipeline. All XHTML builds begin with the same call to the preprocess routine, after which they generate XHTML files and then branch to create navigation files.

Once the preprocess runs, XHTML based builds each run a common series of Ant targets. Navigation may be created before or after this set of common routines.

  • When the CSS parameter is passed to the build to add a CSS file, the copy-css target copies that CSS file from its source location to the proper relative location in the output directory.
  • When a DITAVAL file is used, the copy-revflag target copies the default start and end revision flags into the output directory.
  • Two targets names dita.inner.topics.xhtml and dita.outer.topics.xhtml are used to convert DITA topics into XHTML documents. At this point after the preprocess has completed, each DITA topic document in the temporary directory corresponds to one XHTML output document. The "inner" template is used to process documents that are in the map directory (or subdirectories of that directory). The "outer" template is used to process documents that are outside of the scope of the map, and may end up outside of the designated output directory. Parameters to the build control how documents processed by the "outer" target are handled.

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