Generating print output from DITA using CSS

CSS for PrintPresented by: Jim Mandas and Mark Giffin

Molina HealthcareRegulated content. No DITA experience

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Content Channels

Publishing Environment

Molina Embraces DITA

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Content Strategy

DITA Implementation

What is a stylesheet language?

Two options to style XML

1. Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects (XSL-FO)

2. Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

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The Challenge

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This is me the day our consultant left

My Challenge

Mark Giffin

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Here lies XSL-FO?

CSS Project Requirements

GitHub DITA-CSS plug-in

Existing CSS-to-PDF plugin

– In-house web developers unfamiliar with XML– To say nothing of DITA, class attributes etc.

Existing CSS-to-PDF plugin

– Modular CSS setup with many separate files - our developers asked for a single CSS file

Existing CSS-to-PDF plugin

• Single XHTML file (@chunk="to-content" on map)• CSS is applied to familiar HTML

DITA OT XHTML output

• CSS PDF worked with our formatting

• Automated Section 508 accessibility compliance

• Simplicity• In-house developers were

happy!

DITA OT XHTML Output

Lucky breaks

Things we didn’t get with XHTML transtype

Generated chapter TOCs But they can be addedGenerated main TOC

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Will it work with our CCMS?

It worked!

It worked!

Parts of CSS used

• Uses DITA OT xhtml transtype• New OT transtype: molina.css.pdf• @chunk=“to content” on DITA map file to create a single output HTML file• Pass XHTML and CSS to Antenna House to produce the PDF• A few changes to default XHTML output have been made• Added several @outputclass attributes in DITA source• Plan to open source what we do

Details

Plans

CSS for Print Conclusion

The Backstory

Thank you [email protected]