XML Parser Null when trying to generate a PDF from a DITA Ma

[BTullio]

We have a DITA Map with 5 topic references in it. We have a custom validation setup and everything saves and validates fine.

When we try to generate a PDF from the DITA Map, we get this error:

F [DITAA-OT] [DOTJ012F] Failed to parse the input file 'C:\Program Files\Oxygen XML Author 15\file.ditamap'. The XML Parser reported the following error: : null

The only strange thing I notice is that the DITA Map path is wrong. We opened up the DITA Map from another location. Is this error because it thinks the file is in the oXygen program files folder for some reason?

[Radu]

Hi,

I need more information about the problem.
After the transformation fails, in the DITA OT transformation console view at the bottom of the application you should find the entire output received from the ANT process. Please save the entire output to a file and send it to support@oxygenxml.com. If you could also send us some samples to reproduce the issue, that would be great.

Regards,
Radu

[BTullio]

I sent over the output of the ANT process and a copy of the DITA Map and XML files were are trying to run.

We are running a slightly modified version of DITA so the files probably won't validate on your setup.

[Radu]

Hi Brian,

Some of your DITA topics seem to have absolute references to binary resources instead of relative ones like:

Code: Select all

<image placement="break" href="file:///W:/Locked/2/YOUR_IMAGE_NAME.png" width="4in" height="3in" id="image_2EBF594008A84360BBB056F887A78EB7"></image>

You also have some kind of strange absolute file references (which are not valid URIs) in the DITA Map:

Code: Select all

<topicref format="dita" href="/W:/Working/2/Presentations/PATH_FOLDER/TOPIC_NAME.xml" navtitle="NAVTITLE" scope="local" type="concept"/>

Please try to edit all topics and the map and replace all absolute references with relative ones.
There is an older DITA Open Toolkit bug which is probably related to what you experience:

https://github.com/dita-ot/dita-ot/issu ... t-20036419

Out of curiosity, how did you end up with some references being relative and some being absolute URIs? Did somebody add those manually or did you export the content from some kind of CMS?

Regards,
Radu

[BTullio]

We are coming from XMetaL and nothing about that software is consistent.

For example, image references can be made in 1 of 3 different ways depending on which part of the GUI the author uses. We still can't figure out why sometimes it "chooses" to do things one way and sometimes another.

There is a running joke around here that XMetaL uses a random() function in most of it's logic.

So, it's the "file:///" that's messing up your first example and the leading "/" that's messing up the second?

Can we use a combination of absolute and relative paths within a document? (as long as they are properly formatted)

Thank you for your help.

[Radu]

Hi Brian,

In all cases you should use relative references. They are portable and avoid the issues the DITA Open Toolkit publishing may have with absolute references.

Regards,
Radu

[BTullio]

We changed the topicref paths to relative and it ran but only PDFed a cover page. We are now getting different errors and a few warnings.

We tried starting fresh with a new map created in oXygen and a new task topic ref created in oXygen and got the same errors:

E [DITA-OT] [DOTJ013E] Failed to parse the referenced file 'C:\Program Files\Oxygen XML Author 15\test.xml'. The XML Parser reported the following error:
W [DITA-OT] [DOTX023W]: Unable to retrieve navtitle from target: 'test.xml'. The location of this problem was at (File = W:\Working\2\test.ditamap, Element = topicref:1,5:52)
W [DITA-OT] [DOTX027W]: Unable to retrieve linktext from target: 'test.xml'. The location of this problem was at (File = W:\Working\2\test.ditamap, Element = topicref:1,5:52)
E [DITA-OT] [DOTX008E] File 'W:\Working\2\temp\pdf\test.xml' does not exist or cannot be loaded.\test.xml'. The XML Parser reported the following error:

[BTullio]

Please ignore my last post.

It looks like the last errors were caused by our DITA customization. We got the PDF to generate properly on another computer so we copied over the DITA folder and everything works fine now.

It basically all came down to the absolute paths in the DITA Map.

It would be nice to get a more descriptive error.

Even though relative paths are preferred, I wonder how XMetaL was able to generate a PDF using the map the way it was? oXygen was able to handle the absolute paths just fine until it went to make the PDF.

Just a thought.

Thanks again for the help.

[Radu]

Hi Brian,

Even though relative paths are preferred, I wonder how XMetaL was able to generate a PDF using the map the way it was? oXygen was able to handle the absolute paths just fine until it went to make the PDF.

Oxygen is able to handle any kind of reference (relative or absolute) when editing and rendering content.
The problem is the publishing stage which is done both by Oxygen and XMetal with the DITA Open Toolkit. It may seem possible that XMetal might have some extensions to the DITA Open Toolkit which contain fixes for the issues inside the DITA OT processor but I do not know for sure. Anyway, absolute file paths to DITA topics should always be avoided because of portability issues, a DITA project could also be edited from a MAC OSX or Linux computer (Oxygen is multi-platform) which interpret and compose differently absolute file paths.

Regards,
Radu