Oxygen XML Forum

Good day

We use Oxy-Author (V17) as the XML editor in an Eclipse-based CMS. We also want to provide conditional filtering during publication. Solution 1 would be to do that with Ditaval. Solution 2 with the Oxy-internal profiling/conditional text. I would favor Solution 2 because it lets the user easily define his filter criteria.

Question: how do we approach this profiling/conditional information? I did not see any publication function when using the Eclipse integration. Right now we publish via an own developed publishing routine, which fetches the DITA files and puts them into OT. Somehow we should be possible to grab the filtering criteria first from profiling/conditioning and then go into OT ... Is there a way via the Oxy-API to get that information?

Thanks for help.
Chris.

Hi Chris,

When users apply a profiling attribute set in the DITA Maps Manager view and publish, we dynamically create a DITAVAL file from the current applied profiling attribute set and send it as a parameter to the DITA Open Toolkit processing.

But unfortunately we do not have an API way of allowing you to access the profiling condition set that the user applied in the DITA Maps Manager.

Regards,
Radu

Hi Radu

Thanks for this information. I have thought you create a DITAVAL file somehow in the background. The profiling settings are a nice and userfriendly way to produce such a filter file.

Does this mean you have no technical way to access the profiling information or won't you allow it for users to access it? A nice option would be to lay hand on that created DITAVAL file somehow in order to postprocess it in some publication workflow.

Hi Chris,

We could consider adding API for this (possibly in Oxygen 17.1 we'll release in the Autumn of 2015). I would need more details about your CMS integrations.

So how do users usually publish? They open a DITA Map in the Oxygen DITA Maps Manager view and use a custom toolbar button you have contributed to it in order to publish? Or do you have a custom button for publishing on the main Eclipse toolbar? Where would the user need to take the decision about the current profiling attribute set which would need to be used for publishing?

If the Java extension API on our side would already be available and suitable for your needs, what exact methods would you consider that it would have?

Regards,
Radu

Dear Radu

Let me disucss this with our developers and get back to you. Thanks for your open approach. In short, our publication process looks as follows:

1. Open map
2. Select map and click custom publish button
3. Select output format (OT standard, today PDF, WebHelp and HTMLHelp)
4. Pre-process DITA files
5. Send to OT
6. Transform
7. Store output in defined location

Looking at the process, I would suggest that the user could select in step 3 the profiling set he has created previously in Oxy the regular way. Giving the possiblity to access the profiling set via API should provide functionality to receive the DITAVAL file. But, as said, let me first discuss it internally. Probably next week.

Thanks so far.
Chris.