### 30.1 Choosing how to map formats

DITA2Go provides several ways to map formats to HTML, with considerable overlap among methods. You might want to use some or all of the following:

Configuration settings

Cascading style sheets

Output format definitions

Configuration settings

Insert settings in a configuration file to map paragraph and character formats individually to HTML tags. The display attributes of HTML tags to which you map individual formats are browser dependent. All you can be sure of is that, by default (without CSS), an h1 will look “bigger” than an h2, and so forth. Sometimes the “biggerness” is questionable, especially at the lower end (h4, h5, h6). However, you can use configuration settings to achieve effects not possible with CSS, such as the macro insertion of content. See:

§30.2 Mapping paragraph formats

§30.3 Mapping character formats.

Cascading style sheets

Use cascading style sheets (CSS). Using CSS might cause different effects in different browsers, or even in different versions of the same browser. However, you can override CSS with individual settings in the configuration file. See §31. Setting up CSS for HTML.

Note: Any formatting that is directly created by an HTML tag overrides CSS. Using HTML presentational tags and attributes cripples your ability to use CSS, and therefore to adjust formatting easily without having to alter content.

Output format definitions

Specify exactly how you want each text feature in your document to look in HTML, by defining output formats in a format configuration file. Format definitions are based on CSS, but are easier to use; see §7. Configuring output formats.

Previous Topic: 30. Mapping text formats to HTML/XML

Next Topic: 30.2 Mapping paragraph formats

Parent Topic: 30. Mapping text formats to HTML/XML

Sibling Topics:

30.2 Mapping paragraph formats

30.3 Mapping character formats

30.4 Assigning properties to text formats

30.5 Mapping special characters

30.6 Mapping fonts

30.7 Managing typographic elements for HTML or XML

30.8 Specifying text colors for HTML

30.9 Configuring preformatted text for HTML/XML

30.10 Converting footnotes to HTML or XML

30.11 Converting list formats to HTML (deprecated)