How to Speed up CSS Development and Debugging
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You can speed up your CSS development considerably by not invoking the entire pipeline of transforming your DITA maps to PDF. Instead, you can use the merged map and transform it directly to PDF.

  1. Transform your DITA Map to PDF using the DITA Map PDF - based on HTML5 & CSS or DITA Map PDF - based on DITA & CSS transformation scenario.
  2. Open the merged file (*.merged.html or *.merged.xml) that is located in the output directory in the editor.
  3. Configure an XML to PDF transformation with CSS scenario. Do not set CSS files here since the merged file already contains pointers to the stylesheets. This scenario uses the Chemistry CSS processor.
  4. Optional: Enable the output of the CSS processor using the following preferences page: Options > Preferences > XML > PDF Processors > CSS Processor.
Now you can make incremental changes to the CSS stylesheet and quickly see the results by transforming the merged file directly.
Fastpath: If your changes involve only element styling, with no specific paged media CSS rules and properties, you can simply open the merged file in a browser (such as Chrome or Firefox) and refresh at each CSS change, as shown in: Debugging the CSS.