Batch transformation

[anderszvensson]

Hi,

I'm wondering if there is any way to do batch transformation except through the project view.

My situation is this: I have a number of publications for different products, that often need to be retransformed. It is always the same products with the same settings, so it would make sense to do it as a batch. The different publications also need different ditaval filters set.

I can do this through the command line, if I use a separate version of DITA OT. But I would like to be able to do it from Oxygen.

I know I can sort of do this in the project view, by first selecting different transformation scenarios for each of the files I want to batch transform. But what if I need to do it again in 2 days or so, how do I know that no one has changed what transformation scenario is set on the different ditamaps? There is no feedback in that view.

So what I would have wanted would be a way to simply define a number of transformation scenarios (each with different input.args and ditaval filters set), and then be able to run them all in a batch.

I can't find a way to do that though, is this correct or am I just missing something?

Regards,

Anders

[adrian]

Hello,

The Project view is the only location where batch transformations can be used in Oxygen right now(v12.0).

A solution for frequent transformations of the same set of files is to create a logical folder in the project(contextual menu -> New -> Logical Folder) and in that folder add all the files you run frequent transformations on(like a working set). It's true that this doesn't help if you share a project and its transformation scenarios and other people change the configuration of some of the scenarios.

Note that the associations between your files and the transformation scenarios can't be changed by someone else(unless they are using the same computer and/or username). These associations are saved in your Oxygen options file(which is stored in your user home folder from your machine).

I guess we could also add batch transformations in the Transformation Scenarios view(Window -> Show View -> Transformation Scenarios). We could enable the apply transformation action for multiple selected scenarios. The only problem would be that the scenarios have to be configured to use preset files as input instead on the current file.

Regards,
Adrian

[anderszvensson]

Yes, that was what I was thinking - having preset input files for the scenarios. I think this would be a good feature to have.

Regards,

Anders

[adrian]

We already have this feature request on our issue tracking tool. I've increased its priority. Hopefully this will be implemented in one of the 12.x minor versions.

Regards,
Adrian

[todji]

If you use XSL 2.0, you can read each of the files in independently and transform them.

1. Create an xml file that lists the files you wish to transform.
2. Create an xsl style sheet for the individual files.
3. Create an xsl style sheet that parses the index file, then applies templates to each of the files in the index.

I just did this for a DITA project- we apply the transformation against the DITA MAP and the XSL reads in each of the files and transforms them into HTML.