Migrating to release 2.5

In DITA-OT 2.5, several frequently-overridden legacy style settings were removed from the default PDF plug-in. A separate plug-in can be used to restore the original settings.

Note:
This topic provides a summary of changes in DITA-OT 2.5 that may require modifications to custom stylesheets or plug-ins. For more information on changes in this release, see the DITA-OT 2.5 Release Notes.

Deprecated logging parameters

The args.debug and args.logdir properties have been deprecated and will be removed in an upcoming version of DITA-OT.

  • To enable debug logging, use dita --debug.

    Attention:
    Debug logging requires additional resources and can slow down the build process, so it should only be enabled when further details are required to diagnose problems.

  • To write the log to a file, use dita --logfile=file or ant -l file and specify the path to the log file.

    Unless an absolute path is specified, the value will be interpreted relative to the current directory.

Default PDF style improvements

Several legacy styles have been modified or removed in the default PDF plug-in org.dita.pdf2, including the following:

  • In task topics with only a single step, the step is now rendered as a simple block (rather than as a list item without a label).
  • Table containers now inherit the initial indentation (start-indent) from the parent elements.
  • Borders and indentation have been removed from <example> elements.
  • Links are no longer italicized.
  • Titles for related link lists have been standardized to use the common.title attribute set (which applies the sans-serif font-family) and bold font weight.
  • Several remaining occurrences of left/right borders, margins, padding, and text alignment now use the corresponding start/end equivalents to better support right-to-left languages.

External plug-in for legacy PDF styling

If you have a custom PDF plug-in that explicitly depends on the previous default settings for the aforementioned styles, the org.dita.pdf2.legacy plug-in can be used to restore the pre–2.5 styles.

Plug-in Source code location
org.dita.pdf2.legacy https://github.com/dita-ot/org.dita.pdf2.legacy

To install the legacy PDF plug-in, run the following command:

dita --install=https://github.com/dita-ot/org.dita.pdf2.legacy/archive/2.5.zip
Attention:
Only install the legacy PDF plug-in if you have a custom PDF plug-in that requires the pre–2.5 styles. If your plug-in was designed for DITA-OT 2.4 and does not override these settings, there is no need to install the legacy PDF plug-in.