# Installing DITA Open Toolkit

The DITA-OT distribution package can be installed on Linux, macOS, and Windows. It contains everything that you need to run the toolkit except for Java.

## Before you begin

- Ensure that you have a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) or Java Development Kit (JDK).

  DITA-OT 4.2 is designed to run on Java version 17 or later and built and tested with the Open Java Development Kit (OpenJDK). Compatible Java distributions are available from multiple sources:
  - You can download Oracle distributions from oracle.com/java under commercial license.
  - Eclipse Temurin is the free OpenJDK distribution available from adoptium.net.
  - Free OpenJDK distributions are also provided by Amazon Corretto, Azul Zulu, and Red Hat.
  - Java versions are also available via package managers such as Chocolatey, Homebrew, or SDKMAN!
- If you want to generate HTML Help, ensure that you have HTML Help Workshop installed.

  You can download the Help Workshop from web.archive.org.

## Procedure

1. Download the dita-ot-4.2.4.zip package from the project website at dita-ot.org/download.
2. Extract the contents of the package to the directory where you want to install DITA-OT.
3. Add the absolute path for the bin folder of the DITA-OT installation directory to the PATH environment variable.
   Tip:
   This defines the necessary environment variable that allows the dita command to be run from any location on the file system without typing the path to the command.