Export DITA Map: Making it optional whether to include related topics or not

[Anonymous1]

Hi,

I've got a feature request for the Export DITA Map option.

With this function, we zip all ditamaps and topics that belong to a translation project. The zip file contains all topics that are referenced by the ditamaps and also all topics that are referenced in other topics. This is totally fine if we want to translate the whole project.

But sometimes we have to divide the project into several translation batches, depending on which parts of the documentation are already final. It would be nice to have an option in the "Export DITA Map" dialog that allows you to restrict the export function to the selected ditamap only, without the related link topics.

At the moment, we then open the zip file and delete all folders that contain related topics which are not supposed to be in the translation project at that time.

[Radu]

Hi,

So you would find useful some kind of checkbox like "Export only topics referenced in the maps", right?
Interesting, I will add an internal issue for this.
Of course one way to better structure your project would be to use indirect key-based references for related links. In this way you would have a single DITA Map defining the keys and references to topics and if you would comment out in the exported DITA Map the reference to the keys DITA Map, you could export and the keyrefs would no longer resolve thus the topics would no longer be included.

Regards,
Radu

[Anonymous1]

Right, such an option would be nice.

Your other suggestion is also interesting. We have to think about using key-based references at one point eventually.

[ckabstein]

Hi Radu,

This issue that Ben wrote about is even worse than originally thought.
During the export of the ditamap, the related links topics are resolved recursively, meaning that all the referenced topics are added to the exported files. This is on the one hand probably wanted behaviour to make sure that the exported files can always be built without any link errors, but on the other hand, for our translations this is counterproductive, because there are too many topics added to the exported map that we want to send out to translators.

It's practically impossible for us to detect all topics that should not be sent out for translations due to the recursive behaviour of the export function, and we risk translations of unfinished topics.

I could imagine that the changing of related links to keyrefs instead of hrefs is probably not the hardest task since that might be solved with a script on our end, but creating a ditamap that contains all those keys to the hundreds to thousands of topics for each project that we have is a task that we cannot fulfill right now.

Is there a different solution for us?

Best regards,
Christina

[Radu]

Hi Christina,

I'm not sure how this could be handled on our side.
Do you define those related links in relationship tables or directly in each topic?

When you define those related links do you set some profiling attribute on each related link so that applying a profiling DITAVAL file could be used to filter them out?

Or do you need some kind of setting like "Export Only topics referenced in maps"? Which would recurse DITA Maps (because DITA Maps can refer to other DITA Maps and so on) but would avoid recursing topics? I guess this is feasible, if you want I can add an internal issue for such a checkbox. But I cannot state a precise timeline for implementing it.

There is also a DITA OT plugin which can be used to export a ZIP from a DITA Map:

https://github.com/oxygenxml/dita-export-map

This plugin copies all resources referenced in the .job.xml which would again contain all directly or indirectly referenced topics.
But maybe the plugin can be changed to apply an XSLT stylesheet on the DITA Map located in the transformation temporary files folder, obtain a list of all resources to copy and copy them using an ANT task.

Regards,
Radu

[ckabstein]

Hi Radu,

Do you define those related links in relationship tables or directly in each topic?

We define related links directly in each topic.

When you define those related links do you set some profiling attribute on each related link so that applying a profiling DITAVAL file could be used to filter them out?

We don't set profiling attributes on each related link, only on those that are relevant for a specific product, i. e. we use the product attribute to filter product-related text and links.

Or do you need some kind of setting like "Export Only topics referenced in maps"?

I suppose this is, if there is no other solution, the only solution that we have right now. I would say that recursed ditamaps aren't an issue, because these are easier to take out. It would be great if such a checkbox were implemented in the near future. This forum topic is already almost a year old, so we can wait for a little longer.

I will also check out the export plugin and see if it is useful for the time being.

Thanks and regards,
Christina