Failure to create Index from DITA files

[Shnuttie]

Hello

I'm using the trial version of XML Editor 12.1, build 2011011116.

I have a ditamap that contains references to DITA files. Most of the files have indexterms included. When I transform the map using the DITA Map PDF, WebHelp, or XHTML transforms, the output is generated but there is no index. In the PDF there is an Index bookmark but no page and no entries.

Is this how it is supposed to be? I have read references in the forum to an alternative PDF transform (PDF2?), but can't find it anywhere.

If there really is no way to create an index from a ditamap, that would be a killer for me.

Thanks for your help.
Roger

[Radu]

Hi Roger,

Oxygen uses the DITA Open Toolkit to publish DITA content to various output formats.

The PDF2 reference you encountered on the forum is the name in which the actual PDF transformation was known in the past.

Unfortunately the PDF transformation supports generating the index page only when using the commercial XEP FO processor (it uses XSL-FO extensions which are not yet supported by the open source Apache FOP).

For the other types of publishing (XHTML based) the index page generation is not supported at all as far as I know.

Regards,
Radu

[Shnuttie]

Thanks for your rapid response, Radu.

I understand about the PDF and XHTML outputs. However, I'm surprised that the WebHelp output from the DITA-OT does not include an index. I haven't tried creating WebHelp directly from the DITA-OT - that is, not from inside Oxygen - but would have expected it would generate an index. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

Thanks,
Roger

[Radu]

Hi,

The WebHelp plugin is not part of the DITA OT, it was developed by Oxygen based on the DITA XHTML transformation.
I will add this as an improvement request to our issues list.

Regards,
Radu

[Shnuttie]

Hello Radu

Thanks again for you prompt response, and the information. Index generation for uncompiled HTML output (e.g. WebHelp) is a must for us. We're not concerned about PDF generation.

Regards,
Roger

[Radu]

Hi Roger,

The only parameter which can be set now for the XHTML-like transformation is the args.indexshow parameter which can control whether the index term should appear in the text of the page and if it should get highlighted.
My suggestion to you is to ask around on the DITA Users List:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/
, it might be possible that a project DITA4Publishers has this support.

Regards,
Radu

[sorin_ristache]

Hello,

Thanks again for you prompt response, and the information. Index generation for uncompiled HTML output (e.g. WebHelp) is a must for us. We're not concerned about PDF generation.

The WebHelp output of the DITA WebHelp transformation contributed by Oxygen now includes an Index tab in the left side frame, together with the Content and Search tabs. It will be generally available starting with the next Oxygen version, that is Oxygen 14.0 (the current version is 13.2).


Regards,
Sorin

[karawarburton]

Hi, I'm using oXygen 14 and DITA to PDF transform. I've done all the right markup/coding but the index is not generated. The output is like what is described in this post. There is an Index entry in the left nav but its not bookmarked and there is no index in the document. Please help. What is the solution!!

[Radu]

Hi,

Oxygen uses the DITA Open Toolkit to publish DITA content to various outputs.
Older DITA Open Toolkit versions did not have the capability to generate the PDF index page using the default PDF processor (the index page was only generated when producing the PDF using a commercial PDF processor like XEP or Antenna House).
In more recent DITA Open Toolkit versions the Index page can also be generated using the default PDF transformation.
So you can either:

1) Update to a newer Oxygen version (Oxygen 18.0 is the current one) which comes with a newer DITA OT bundled.
2) Download DITA Open Toolkit 2.2.4 separately and use it as an external DITA Open Toolkit with Oxygen to produce the PDF using it.

Regards,
Radu