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1-Visitor
December 20, 2010
Question

Transforming an XML doc to DITA?

  • December 20, 2010
  • 2 replies
  • 4359 views

Is it possible to transform an existing xml document using a custom stylesheet to dita xml using the Compose Using XSL option?

The effort is merely to get the text into the dita framework and then re-write, re-structure without all the cut and paste.

I get an error that states "Stylesheet "location/name" is not valid for Compose Using XSL.
Stylesheet type: XSL
Uses: XML"

Is there a config file that needs to be altered/created? Will Arbortext allow transforming one XML to another?

    2 replies

    1-Visitor
    January 14, 2011

    Hi Don,

    Can you give me more details? Our sales team does this frequently converting UBL Quotes to UBL Purchase Orders using the same mechanism. Are you using Styler or Editor?

    Liz

    1-Visitor
    January 14, 2011

    I have both Styler and Editor.

    We originally created a DTD and stylesheet for our documents based on a previous Word template. We are now moving into DITA and are looking at the possibility of transforming, rather than complete re-writing, our documents into DITA. Currently, I have created an XSL based on the DITA stylesheet to produce clean and valid html that can use multiple CSS for different usages. From this I conjectured that we could develop an XSL that would transform the legacy documents, into basic DITA, that could then be re-written and structured. This would at least eliminate the copy and paste insanity.

    17-Peridot
    January 14, 2011

    Don

    I'd say Arbortext Import/Export is more suited for this, but you still can convert XML to XML with Editor and custom XSL template.

    See the attached example. It's very basic, but demonstrates the concept.