What is a "PI marker" or "programming instruction marker"

[Jeremy H. Griffith]

On Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:24:13 -0800 (PST), Writer <generic668 at yahoo.ca> wrote:

>> [By way of some background: We're in an odd spot where we're between
>> budgets AND about to shift to 'native' DITA using oXygen; so they're
>> trying hard not to invest further in Frame-specific products. But this
>> requirement for Help (in am month!) is gonna mean one last tool goes in
>> that box.]
>
>Can't you output to CHM using oXygen?

Sure, in the same sense that you can create 
a large Web site using only Notepad.  ;-)

OxygenXML, like most other DITA editors (with
the notable exception of Arbortext) uses the
DITA-OT for output to HTML and PDF.  Some of
the editors make custom changes to the OT to
work with their particular docs, like XMetaL.
Most provide some sort of menu interface.

The DITA-OT is a free set of ant and XSLT 
scripts, with a Java part (dost.jar), that
is maintained by some TC members and others as
the "reference implementation" for DITA outputs.
It is updated every month or so.

Note that "reference implementation" really
means 'demo", and does not imply software that
is commercially usable.  Nonetheless, people
do use it for production, at quite a high price
for free software.  Expect to spend literally
hundreds of hours on customization of the XSLT,
unless you are an *expert* XSLT programmer.
And then do most of it again when the next rev
breaks half your patches, or stick with the old
version (which is what people usually do, for 
years).

There are other alternatives, one of which is
our DITA2Go, which is also free, but *is* a
commercial-quality program.  We derived it
from Mif2Go, with which it shares all of the
output modules, but uses DITA source instead 
of Frame.  It's far easier to customize than the
OT, and about ten times as fast:
  http://dita2go.com

There is also another XSLT implementation
for DITA that many prefer (DITAC, also free), 
and Webworks ePublisher Pro (not free) can 
process DITA input.  And there's Arbortext 
(*very* far from free).  There may be more,
but most just hand you the OT one way or
another.  There are some links on the home
page of DITA2Go (at the link above).

I'd say if someone has a looming deadline,
that is **not** the time to start learning
how to customize the OT...  LOL!

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  <jeremy at omsys.com>    http://mif2go.com/