The DITA Open Toolkit Docker containers provide both a ready-to-use Open Toolkit and a "base" container that you can use as the base for your own containers that include additional plugins. The containers also demonstrate a container design pattern that makes it easy to create new Open Toolkit plugin containers with additional plugins or whatever you might need along with the Open Toolkit. The DITA Community and DITA for Publishers Docker containers use this pattern for their own containers and serve as examples of how to use the base container to create custom containers.

This guide describes how to use the ditaot/dita-ot container for running the Open Toolkit as well as how to use the ditaot/dita-ot-base container as the basis for your own custom DITA Open Toolkit containers, as demonstrated by the DITA Community and DITA for Publishers Docker container projects.

This guide is written primarily for users on Windows or OS X. If you are using these containers in a Linux environment things are a little easier and you probably already know most of what you need to know. The instructions assume you are using a Docker machine.