Customizing the default CSS of a document type

The easiest way of customizing the default CSS stylesheet of a document type is to create a new CSS stylesheet in the same folder as the customized one, import the customized CSS stylesheet and set the new stylesheet as the default CSS of the document type. For example let us customize the default CSS for DITA documents by changing the background color of the task and topic elements to red. First we create a new CSS stylesheet called my_dita.css in the folder ${frameworks}/dita/css_classed where the default stylesheet called dita.css is located. ${frameworks} is the subfolder frameworks of the Oxygen XML Editor. The new stylesheet my_dita.css contains:

@import "dita.css";
    
task, topic{
    background-color:red;
}

To set the new stylesheet as the default CSS stylesheet for DITA documents first open the Document Type Association preferences panel from menu OptionsPreferences+Document Type Association Select the DITA document type and start editing it by pressing the Edit button. The user role must be set to Developer otherwise a warning is displayed and a duplicate copy of the DITA document type is created and edited. This check makes sure that regular content authors who just edit the content of XML documents do not accidentally modify the document type. In the Author tab of the document type edit dialog change the URI of the default CSS stylesheet from ${frameworks}/dita/css_classed/dita.css to ${frameworks}/dita/css_classed/my_dita.css.

 

Figure 7.39. Set the location of the default CSS stylesheet

Set the location of the default CSS stylesheet

Press OK in all the dialogs to validate the changes. Now you can start editing DITA documents based on the new CSS stylesheet. You can edit the new CSS stylesheet itself at any time and see the effects on rendering DITA XML documents in the Author mode by running the Refresh action available on the Author toolbar and on the DITA menu.