Problems with Batch converter
Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 5:20 pm
Soon we will have to deliver DITA files to customers so that they can use them in their documentation.
Long story short, since there is no way to do a dita2dita transformation that does all the filtering and key replacing, I am trying to do a DITA->(X)HTML->DITA conversion (the map export transformation doesn't resolve the keys/remove comments/etc, so it doesn't help us much).
To convert (X)HTML to DITA, I installed the Batch Converter addon. The first problem I encountered is that after installing in XML Editor 21.1, build 2019120214, there is no Batch Converter submenu will available in the Tools menu nor in the contextual menu of the Project view. The Batch Converter is listed if I go to Manage Add-Ons, showing version 1.1.16.
I got around this by using the XML Editor 21.0, build 2019022207 installation which was luckily still available on my machine and had the Batch Converter 1.1.14 - I updated that to the latest version and it does show up in the Tools menu and contextual menu of the Project view.
There are a few issues with using the Batch Converter to convert html5 to DITA, the main one being the topic title not being included in <title> but in <body>. This is not an issue when converting xhtml to DITA, but there are other issues.
I have attached a zip file with a small test - r_characteristics.dita is the original file, the 2 .html files are obtained using the HTML5 and XHTML transformations, which are then transformed back to DITA using the Batch Converter.
Is there any chance that the issues highlighted in the converted DITA files can be fixed in the very near future so that we can try this roundabout approach to convert DITA to DITA?
It would also be great if a dita2dita transformation would be available, as more and more companies are using DITA there will be increasing demand to deliver DITA source files to customers so that they can reuse the content in their product documentation (I've found a 2y old thread about this on the dita-users group!) - is this something that you might be considering to develop?
Thank you.
Best regards,
Ozana