Org-mode for Docbook and DITA

Org-mode for Docbook and DITA

[Mark Lewin]

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Hi all,

I'll shortly be starting a new role as a tech writer, where much of the docs are written in Docbook and DITA.

I'm hoping to do the bulk of my work in org-mode and export to the required format.

I've seen an exporter for Docbook, but I wonder if anyone has successfully used Emacs/org-mode to work with DITA content? Any recommendations? How are custom tags handled? And how can I best work with Docbook/DITA files that were created in another editor, like OxygenXML?

Thanks in advance.


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Re: Org-mode for Docbook and DITA

[Thomas Redelberger]

Hi Mark,

You might want to look at org-mode's built I exporters and/or using "pandoc". pandoc supports Docbook both on input and output and org-mode on input and output.
I use a Makefile when combining Emacs/org and pandoc. Alternatively you might want to use the Emacs package org-pandoc (ox-pandoc?), which helps with integration.


To go from org to Docbook and DITA - which are both XML formats - I would probably use org's XHTML export and then do an XSLT transformation to the target format.
You might want to look at my web site
  https://web222.webclient5.de/doc/swdev/emacs/orgmode/html
It shows
1) How to customize the org HTML exporter
2) How to post-process the XHTML using an XSLT transformation (simple ELISP code included)

I do step 2) to further change the XHTML to my requirements. You would instead generate Docbook or DITA XML.

The main effort would be to develop the XSLT style sheets needed. Maybe somebody has already done that development work for HTML->Docbook and HTML->DITA


Regards "custom tags" (custom elements?):
- You can embed "raw HTML code" in org.
   I have not checked, but this might cover any custom XML element

- If the semantics of the custom tags are covered by built-in org
   constructs (like e.g. "properties", "tags") then you might be
   able to transform from org to XML like mentioned above


I guess "round trip" functionality would be quite a challenge compared to one way conversion.

Best regards
Thomas


--
Thomas Redelberger
redetho@gmx.de

Am 31.05.2024 um 08:59 schrieb Mark Lewin:
> Hi all,
>
> I'll shortly be starting a new role as a tech writer, where much of the docs are written in Docbook and DITA.
>
> I'm hoping to do the bulk of my work in org-mode and export to the required format.
>
> I've seen an exporter for Docbook, but I wonder if anyone has successfully used Emacs/org-mode to work with DITA content? Any recommendations? How are custom tags handled? And how can I best work with Docbook/DITA files that were created in another editor, like OxygenXML?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>