[SOLVED] Control ID generated by DITA_OT transform of imageMap to HTML

Control ID generated by DITA_OT transform of imageMap to HTML

I have a DITA topic that includes an imagemap.

When published to HTML (responsive webhelp) two HTML components are generated, an img and a map. These must be connected via an id field, for which DITA_OT freshly generates a unique one each time.

This triggers unnecessary changes in our version control system.

Is there a way of specifying the ID value to be used to link the two HTML components?

Solution

The unique IDs are generated in the XSLT stylesheet "DITA-OT/plugins/org.dita.html5/xsl/ut-d.xsl" in the template:

  <xsl:template match="*[contains(@class,' ut-d/imagemap ')]" name="topic.ut-d.imagemap">

using the generate-id() function. From what I know and what I tested I assume that if the processed DITA content remains exactly the same, the generated IDs should not change. Can you perform a similar test? Publish the same DITA Map twice to two output folders, then check if this generated ID is different in the two folders.

But you could also try to take control over the IDs by creating a DITA OT plugin which overrides this entire xsl template and lets you take control over the ID value.