### 24.3 Specifying general options for DITA

This section summarizes DITA-specific default values and recommended options for configuration settings in the following areas:

Declaration

Standard XML options

Filtering options

Style options

CSS

Context-sensitive help

Declaration

DITA2Go sets the following default values for the PUBLIC declaration, depending on the DITA version and on the topic type. For example, for DITA version 1.1 and topic type concept:

    [HTMLOptions]
    HTMLDocType="-//OASIS//DTD DITA 1.1 Concept//EN"
    HTMLDTD="docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CS01/dtd/concept.dtd"

If you need the declaration to comply with the requirements of third-party tools, you can override the default values. See §41.7.2 Overriding settings in a DITA content model and §41.7.4 Overriding declarations in a DITA map content model.

Standard XML options

The following XML settings cannot be overridden:

    [HTMLOptions]
    AlignAttributes = No
    NoFonts = Yes

    [Tables]
    TableAttributes = No

Filtering options

These settings provide DITA-specific default values for assorted options; you do not have to include the following settings in your configuration file unless you change their values:

    [HTMLOptions]
    ; The following are the DITA-specific defaults for each setting:
    FileSuffix = .dita
    RemoveANames = Yes
    ATagElement = xref
    XMLEncoding = UTF-8
    NumericCharRefs = No
    FootInlineTag = fn
    HardRetPara = No
    RemoveEmptyParagraphs = Yes
    RemoveEmptyTableParagraphs = Yes

See §22. Converting to HTML/XHTML.

Style options

Keep empty paragraphs empty (if not removed):

    [HTMLOptions]
    EmptyParaContent =

See §30.2.5 Providing content for empty paragraphs.

CSS

The CSS file DITA2Go generates for DITA specifies classes only, no tags, so that it can be used for HTML outputs generated from the DITA files. These options are in effect by default:

    [CSS]
    WriteClassAttributes = No
    ClassIsTag = No

which results in [DITAOptions]UseOutputClass=No.

To include CSS class names, specify [DITAOptions]UseOutputClass=Yes, then convert @outputclass to class attributes in the HTML. Setting [CSS]UseCSS=Yes also sets [DITAOptions]UseOutputClass=Yes; see §31.4.1 Specifying CSS options in a DITA2Go configuration file.

Note: To include CSS class names as outputclass attributes, make sure your configuration file does not specify [CSS]WriteClassAttributes=No.

Context-sensitive help

By default, DITA output includes all context-sensitive help targets provided in your source document via TopicAlias PI markers, in the following form:

    <data name="topicalias" value="IDH_about" />

To exclude these targets from DITA output:

    [DITAOptions]
    ; UseTopicAlias = Yes (default, include CSH targets in DITA output)
    ; or No
    UseTopicAlias=No

See:

§16.10 Setting up Context Sensitive Help (CSH)

§24.10 Including CSH targets in DITA XML

Previous Topic: 24.2.5 Substituting document format names for default names

Next Topic: 24.4 Configuring DITA elements

Parent Topic: 24. Converting to DITA XML

Sibling Topics:

24.1 Generating DITA XML output from DITA input

24.2 Setting up a DITA XML project

24.4 Configuring DITA elements

24.5 Nesting DITA block elements

24.6 Specifying options for tables in DITA XML

24.7 Specifying options for images in DITA XML

24.8 Configuring DITA topics

24.9 Configuring cross references and links for DITA

24.10 Including CSH targets in DITA XML

24.11 Overriding DITA settings with markers