Defining Online Features with DITA
You assign formatting and features to styles in ePublisher. These style definitions are stored in your Stationery and mapped to DITA classes. For some online features, such as index entries, you use the standard DITA elements to implement the feature. For more information about creating Stationery and implementing online features, see “Designing, Deploying, and Managing Stationery” on page 103.
Review the following considerations to understand how to implement each online feature using DITA elements and the Stationery options within ePublisher:
For index entries, use the standard DITA tag.
For related topics, assign related topics options in ePublisher to paragraph styles for related-links elements, such as the Related Task and Related Concept styles.
For expand/collapse sections, assign dropdown options in ePublisher to the appropriate paragraph styles. You cannot use a marker to identify the end of the expand/collapse section, so you need to use a paragraph style to identify the end.
For conditions, use attributes and ditaval file filtering. Since there is no default ditaval file, you can create the scripts\dita\default.ditaval file to provide the default values. You can also create an override file for each ditamap by naming the ditaval file ditamapname.ditaval and storing it in the same location with the ditamap.
For variables, use conref and ditaval file filtering.
For popup windows, use the xref element for the link and define paragraph styles with the popup options in ePublisher.
For specifying file names, use the othermeta element to define the marker with the name for the file.
For specifying a topic alias for context-sensitive help links, use the othermeta element to define the marker with the value of the topic ID for that topic.
For meta tag keywords, use the othermeta element to define the marker with the keywords you want to include in the meta tag in the generated output.
For opening a topic in a custom window, use the othermeta element to define the marker with the name of the window in which to open the topic.
For a custom TOC icon, use the othermeta element to define the marker with the name of the TOC icon to use for the generated topic.
For See Also links, use related topics, which are available in more output formats. See Also link support is being reviewed for future enhancements.
For accessibility features, such as image alternate text and long descriptions, use standard DITA elements and attributes.