Procedure

1. Unzip the distribution in any directory you want.

   C:\> mkdir ditac
   C:\> cd ditac
   C:\ditac> unzip ditac-3_17_1.zip
   C:\ditac> dir ditac-3_17_1
   ... <DIR> bin
   ... <DIR> doc
   ... <DIR> docsrc
   ...

   XMLmind DITA Converter is intended to be used directly from the ditac-3_17_1/ directory. That is, you can run the ditac command by simply executing (in a Command Prompt on windows, a terminal on Unix):

   C:\ditac> ditac-3_17_1\bin\ditac

2. Depending the output formats you want to generate, you'll need to download and install third-party external tools.
   • If you want to generate PDF or PostScript®, download and install Apache FOP . If your DITA document contain MathML , you'll also want to install the JEuclid FOP plug-in . This plug-in is needed to add MathML support to Apache FOP.
     Alternatively, you may prefer to purchase RenderX XEP or Antenna House Formatter . Note that RenderX XEP Personal Edition is free to use.

     Tip The ditac-N_N_N-plus-fop.zip distribution contains most recent Apache FOP (including hyphenation and JEuclid -based MathML support). This XSL-FO processor is automatically declared and thus, ready to be used to generate PDF or PostScript.

   • If you want to generate RTF (can be opened in Word 2000+), WordprocessingML (can be opened in Word 2003+), Office Open XML (.docx, can be opened in Word 2007+) or OpenOffice (.odt, can be opened in OpenOffice/LibreOffice 2+), then you need to purchase XMLmind XSL-FO Converter Professional Edition .
     You can give XMLmind XSL-FO Converter a try by downloading Evaluation Edition from XMLmind XSL-FO Converter web site . Do not be surprised because XMLmind XSL-FO Converter Evaluation Edition generates output containing random duplicate letters. Of course, this does not happen with Professional Edition!
   • If you want to generate HTML Help, download and install the HTML Help Workshop (contains hhc.exe).
3. If you have installed any of the above external tools, you need now to instruct ditac where to find them. This can be done using the following command line options: -fop, -xep, -ahf, -xfc, -hhc. However, it is much more convenient to specify these command-line options once for all in a ditac.options file.
   1. Create ditac.options, a plain text file encoded using the native encoding of the platform (e.g. Windows-1252 on a Western Windows PC), in the ditac user preferences directory.
      The ditac user preferences directory is:

      • $HOME/.ditac/ on Linux.
      • $HOME/Library/Application Support/XMLmind/ditac/ on the Mac.
      • %APPDATA%\XMLmind\ditac\ on Windows. Example: C:\Users\john\AppData\Roaming\XMLmind\ditac\.
   2. Add the equivalent of a command-line option for each external tool installed in the preceding step. Use one or more newline characters to separate the options. More information in The ditac.options file.

      -fop E:\opt\fop\fop\fop.bat
      -xfc E:\opt\xfc\bin\fo2rtf.bat
      -hhc "C:\Program Files\HTML Help Workshop\hhc.exe"