DITA CMS Based Transformation Pre-Processing Step Question

[JamesL]

In our work environment, we have three ways that we transform a DITA document to PDF/HTML: via a command line and the DITA-OT, via a CCMS (Alfresco with Componize), and via Oxygen.

In all three scenarios we have highly customized the included DITA-OT to our rendering needs. One of these customizations is to pre-process all of the files (ditamap and DITA files) before they get to the filtering (dost.jar) stage.

To do this, in the build_preprocess.xml file, I have inserted a new stage between "start-preprocess" and "gen-list-with-flagging" stages.

Now this works perfectly in the command line DITA-OT and CCMS scenarios. This also works fine in the Oxygen transformation scenario when the ditamap and files are all local on a users computer.

But when a transformation through Oxygen is attempted on a ditamap that resides, we have some issues due to the timing of Oxygen FTP'ing the files over. (Before I go on, I should point out that we have set up User Defined transformation scenarios that allow us to transform ditamaps from the CCMS).

I have found that before the "gen-list-with-flagging" stage, only the ditamap is FTP'ed over into the temp directory. It is not until the "gen-list-with-flagging" that the rest of the files used in the document are brought over.

So after all of that setup, now comes my question

Is there a way I can force Oxygen to FTP all of the files used over into the temp directory before I reach the "gen-list-with-flagging" stage?

The way I have things set up now, I modify the temp copies of the ditamap and files, then point the "
"gen-list-with-flagging" to the location of those modified files.

Thanks!

-James

[Radu]

Hi James,

The DITA OT does not support publishing remote resources by default.
In order to support this kind of remote publishing, Oxygen just brings the main DITA Map to a temporary files folder. Then it sets a custom parser configuration to the DITA OT and while the DITA OT is parsing DITA XML content, our code looks at the references and brings them down.
So while the DITA OT code is parsing the DITA Map, our extensions bring the topic references to the temporary files folder.

So the answer to:

Is there a way I can force Oxygen to FTP all of the files used over into the temp directory before I reach the "gen-list-with-flagging" stage?

Is: Not right now.
In the future we plan to add an action to export a DITA Map (+ all directly and indirectly referenced resources) to a certain folder.
After we make this improvement, we could change the way in which remote resources are brought locally. Before the publishing we could have an export stage which exports all resources to a temporary files directory. And then the DITA OT could be started over those local resources located somewhere in the temporary files folder.

Regards,
Radu

[JamesL]

That is what I figured, but thank you for the detailed reply!

-James