XEP install error

[maglid]

I'm using Oxygen 18.1 on OSX. Oxygen seemed to find where XEP was when I installed Oxygen. But when I run a PDF from a DITA map (DITA OT 1.8.5), the build fails with this error:

BUILD FAILED
/Users/maglid/git/tools/DITA-OT/build.xml:44: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/Users/maglid/git/tools/DITA-OT/plugins/org.dita.pdf2/build.xml:150: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/Users/maglid/git/tools/DITA-OT/plugins/org.dita.pdf2/build_xep.xml:106: /Users/maglid/git/tools/DITA-OT/plugins/org.dita.pdf2/lib/xep/lib/lib does not exist.

So it's looking for this nonexistent path:
/Users/maglid/git/tools/DITA-OT/plugins/org.dita.pdf2/lib/xep/lib/lib

But the actual path to the XEP jar file is:
/Users/maglid/git/tools/DITA-OT/plugins/org.dita.pdf2/lib/xep/lib/xep.jar

In the FO Processors dialog it is set up like this:
/Users/maglid/git/tools/DITA-OT/plugins/org.dita.pdf2/lib/xep/lib/xep.jar -fo ${fo} -${method} ${out}

Is there something wrong in my setup?

XEP creates a PDF without errors when I give it this command on the command line:
java -jar /Users/maglid/git/tools/DITA-OT/plugins/org.dita.pdf2/lib/xep/lib/xep.jar -fo topic.fo -pdf aaa.pdf

Thanks,
Mark

[Radu]

Hi Mark,

In the Preferences->XML / XSLT-FO-XQuery / FO Processors you should remove the "XEP" entry and after this use the special "Add XEP FO Processor" Browse button located at the bottom to browse and choose the XEP executable script (I think that is called "xep.sh" or plain "xep") from the XEP installation folder.
Oxygen will fill out for the "XEP" engine a command line like this:

Code: Select all

/Users/maglid/git/tools/DITA-OT/plugins/org.dita.pdf2/lib/xep/xep.sh -fo ${fo} -${method} ${out}

After this the DITA publishing should start working.
When running the DITA OT Oxygen does not really use the entire command line, it just uses the path to the xep executable in order to know the XEP installation folder and to pass this information to the DITA OT ANT build files.
And because your command line used something like this /Users/maglid/git/tools/DITA-OT/plugins/org.dita.pdf2/lib/xep/lib/xep.jar Oxygen considered that the XEP installation folder was this one /Users/maglid/git/tools/DITA-OT/plugins/org.dita.pdf2/lib/xep/lib/, it passed this information to the ANT build files which added an extra "lib/" to it to compose the path to the XEP libraries.

Regards,
Radu

[maglid]

Thanks Radu. Does it need to be the shell script? Because the XEP shell script (usually called "xep") is not in the repo I'm using. Only the jar file xep.jar is available as an executable.

I could dig up the shell script from another XEP installation I have, but I'd like to now if I can get it to work with xep.jar instead.

[maglid]

I got it working. All I did was to remove the existing XEP config in the FO Processors dialog, and replace it with nothing. Then it just worked. I guess Oxygen was smart enough to figure it out from these DITA OT parameters that were already there in the transformations scenario:

pdf.formatter = xep
custom.xep.config = ${homeDir}/git/tools/DITA-OT/plugins/org.dita.pdf2/lib/xep/xep.xml

Thanks,
Mark

[Radu]

Hi Mark,

Great. Once Oxygen does not know where XEP is, it will not send this information anymore to the DITA Open Toolkit publishing engine. And the engine is configured to use by default the XEP present exactly where you placed it.

Regards,
Radu