Mystery of the docs in the PDF transformation

[manthony]

I have a four book maps in the same directory.

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docs/admin_guide/admin_guide_book.ditamap 

docs/admin_guide/advanced_searches_guide_book.map 

docs/admin_guide/internal_POC_guide_book.ditamap 

docs/admin_guide/user_guide_book.ditamap
 

They are all using the same, project-level transformation and the transformation is specified at the Project level. For some reason, 1 book (admin_guide_book.ditamap) is always output to a different level than the other books.

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├── admin_guide

│   ├── advanced_searches_guide_book.pdf

│   ├── internal_POC_guide_book.pdf

│   └── user_guide_book.pdf

├── dita.list

├── dita.xml.properties

├── docs

│   └── admin_guide

│       └── admin_guide_book.pdf

This is extra docs directory for one book is a problem because we plan to automate further. Different books should not result in a different transformation output behavior. So, I tried a couple of more things to pinpoint the reason. I wanted to rule out the our custom PDF transform itself, so I tried using the base DITA Map PDF transformation. The output was this:

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./out/pdf

./out/pdf/admin_guide/advanced_searches_guide_book.pdf

./out/pdf/admin_guide/internal_POC_guide_book.pdf

./out/pdf/admin_guide/user_guide_book.pdf

./out/pdf/docs/admin_guide/admin_guide_book.pdf

The docs directory was still there. Could it be the base PDF transform cared somehow about whether the directory and the file had similar names? I tried changing the name of the book map again. I got this output

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./out/pdf/docs/admin_guide/admin_book.pdf

So, not that. At this point, it looks like the problem could be in the book's map file but the map file in VI and out looks identical to the others in its structure. I'm at a loss what to try next to debug this. I could code my build around the mysterious output path issue but it is driving me crazy at this point

Anybody got any ideas why this one particular book picks up an extra docs directory level when it outputs?

[Radu]

Hi Mary,

Oxygen uses the DITA Open Toolkit publishing engine to publish DITA content to various output formats.
The publishing engine has always had publishing problems when you have references to resources outside of the folder where the main published DITA Map is located. For example in your case all the published DITA Maps are in a subfolder and all the other DITA or image resources are in folders outside of that subfolder.
In this topic we propose two solutions for this:

https://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/versions/ ... -refs.html

As you want to automate the output (maybe have an integration server publishing the documentation) the second option (that specific parameter) only works when publishing from Oxygen.
So ideally you would move your top level DITA Maps to the "docs" folder so that all referenced resources are underneath them.

Regards,
Radu

[manthony]

Thanks Radu. I discovered this was the case with a bit more experimenting.