DITA publishing by WebHelp Classic

[pahom]

Hello,
I'am just starting to work with DITA and Oxygen.
Could you help me with one publishing problem. I decided to use DITA WebHelp Classic Transformation scenario, but the build-in publisher has some problems with styles: so there are no border lines into tables, no icons for notes and so on. While WebHelp Responsive has good CSS styles. So the question is: can I combine this two transformation scenarios (use the CSS styles from Responsive in Classic)?

PS I've read about WebHelp Output Customization in docs and understand that is not an standard option to use Classic for DITA. But anyway, maybe is it possible to combine these scenarios?

[Costin]

Hi pahom,

Please note that the WebHelp Classic transformation scenario became deprecated 2 versions ago and, currently, we only implement small fixes, but it will be most probably dropped in the near future versions of oXygen.
So, as long as you do not have a specific reason to use the deprecated WebHelp Classic transformation scenario, it is highly recommended to use the modern WebHelp Responsive scenario instead.

As the Responsive and Classic are two different WebHelp formats, the selectors may differ so even if you would use the WebHelp Responsive CSS styling on the Classic output, it may not have any impact or you might obtain results different than the expectations.

If, for any specific reason, you insist in running the Classic transformation, then you could develop and use your own CSS file, to customize the output.
For that, you should pass the file to the scenario, using two parameters:
- edit the WebHelp Classic transformation scenario and open the Parameters tab.
- set the args.css parameter to the path of your custom CSS file.
- set the args.copycss parameter to yes to automatically copy your custom CSS in the output folder when the transformation scenario is processed.
- click OK to save the changes to the transformation scenario.
- run the transformation scenario.
Your custom CSS will be applied as a final layer on top of any existing CSS rules and the output will reflect the changes you made.

Regards,
Costin