How to handle style in the APT markup language?

APT does not support style. If you need more control you should use xdoc instead.

How to export in PDF?

Doxia no longer generates PDF. The two modules that used to do it, the iText module and the FO module, were removed in Doxia 2.0.0-M1, see DOXIA-630.

The Maven PDF Plugin, which built on those modules, was retired in March 2025. Its final release, 1.6.2, is still resolvable from Maven Central, but it is not maintained and the modules it depends on only exist in the unmaintained Doxia 1.x line.

Why XML based sinks don't generate nicely formatted documents?

We decided to keep pretty printing out of the core modules. So, XML based sinks like Xdoc or XHTML are intentionally unformatted. You could always do this after the document generation or directly by creating a specialized end-user sink (see DOXIA-255).

Where are the Maven Doxia XSD schemas files?

The Doxia XSD files are located here:

Xdoc XSD 2.0

https://maven.apache.org/xsd/xdoc-2.0.xsd

FML XSD 1.0.1

https://maven.apache.org/xsd/fml-1.0.1.xsd

Book XSD 1.0

https://maven.apache.org/xsd/book-1.0.0.xsd

Document XSD 1.0.1

https://maven.apache.org/xsd/document-1.0.1.xsd

Decoration XSD 1.0

https://maven.apache.org/xsd/decoration-1.0.0.xsd

Your favorite IDE probably supports XSD schema's for Xdoc and FML files. You need to specify the following:

<document xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/XDOC/2.0"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/XDOC/2.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/xdoc-2.0.xsd">
  ...
</document>

<faqs xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/FML/1.0.1"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/FML/1.0.1 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/fml-1.0.1.xsd">
  ...
</faqs>

<book xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/BOOK/1.0.0"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/BOOK/1.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/book-1.0.0.xsd">
  ...
</book>

<document xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/DOCUMENT/1.0.1"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/DOCUMENT/1.0.1 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/document-1.0.1.xsd"
  outputName="...">
  ...
</document>

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/DECORATION/1.0.0"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/DECORATION/1.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/decoration-1.0.0.xsd">
  ...
</project>

Note: for performance reasons, all XSDs/DTDs use a cache in ${java.io.tmpdir}.

How to define character entities in Doxia XML files with XSD?

Since it is not possible to define character entity references (like &copy;) in XSDs (unlike DTDs), each XML file should have a <!DOCTYPE> to define the character entity set.

For instance, you could add the following in your Xdoc XML files to be similar to XHTML 1.0 Transitional dtd:

<!DOCTYPE document [
  <!-- These are the entity sets for ISO Latin 1 characters for the XHTML -->
  <!ENTITY % HTMLlat1 PUBLIC "-//W3C//ENTITIES Latin 1 for XHTML//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml-lat1.ent">
  %HTMLlat1;
  <!-- These are the entity sets for special characters for the XHTML -->
  <!ENTITY % HTMLsymbol PUBLIC "-//W3C//ENTITIES Symbols for XHTML//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml-symbol.ent">
  %HTMLsymbol;
  <!-- These are the entity sets for symbol characters for the XHTML -->
  <!ENTITY % HTMLspecial PUBLIC "-//W3C//ENTITIES Special for XHTML//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml-special.ent">
  %HTMLspecial;
]>
<document xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/XDOC/2.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/XDOC/2.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/xdoc-2.0.xsd">
...
</document>

Note: if CDATA is used to specify entity, Doxia will replace & by &amp; (i.e "<![CDATA[&iexcl;]]>" becomes "&amp;iexcl;").