Using "appendices" wrapper causes PDF2 failure or error

Using the latest development code, I am trying to reuse a set of appendices from one bookmap inside of another, so I wrapped them in the <appendices> element:

<appendices id="app">
<appendix href="bookapp1.dita"/>
<appendix href="bookapp2.dita"/>
</appendices>

When @href is specified on the <appendices> element, the PDF looks fine. When there is no @href as in the sample above, output is broken. AH returns a PDF without the two topics (though the titles appear in the contents / bookmarks). It also generates the following errors:

      [ahf] Error Code  : 10769 (2A11)
      [ahf] Unresolved id value: "_OPENTOPIC_TOC_PROCESSING_d68e2780".
      [ahf] Line 1, Col 20232, file:///C:/Users/IBM_AD~1/AppData/Local/Temp/temp20151008163148010/topic.fo
      [ahf] Error Level : 2
      [ahf] Error Code  : 10769 (2A11)
      [ahf] Unresolved id value: "_OPENTOPIC_TOC_PROCESSING_d68e2867".
      [ahf] Line 1, Col 20849, file:///C:/Users/IBM_AD~1/AppData/Local/Temp/temp20151008163148010/topic.fo

When I try with FOP, I get Java errors and no PDF.

[adambhere]

Tried with Apache FOP and no attributes on the element. Got no errors, but the PDF output does not include the individual appendices (appendix elements and their content). In DITA OT 1.8.5, it was possible to wrap any number of <appendix> elements in <appendices>, with appendices including neither @navtitle nor @href, and the individual <appendix> elements were rendered in PDF.

A work-around seems to be to add @navtitle or @href to the <appendices> element. This causes the nested <appendix> elements to be rendered, but results in an unwanted “Appendix” page, similar to a part front page.

The ideal solution would be to render <appendices> only if a @navtitle or @href is provided, otherwise, render only the nested <appendix> elements. In other words the following:

<appendix href="appendix_topic1.dita" />
<appendix href="appendix_topic2.dita" />

… and this:

<appendices>
    <appendix href="appedix_topic1.dita" />
    <appendix href="appendix_topic2.dita" />
</appendices>

… should both result in only appendix_topic{x}.dita being rendered.

I’d be happy to override the existing behaviour in our PDF plug-in, but have not yet identified the code area to modify: any tips would be appreciated.

[robander]

@infotexture yes - that is correct. That’s … not really the same as the original issue, which was that if I have plain <appendices> with no title or @href I previously got errors + every nested appendix topic was missing.

It’s probably worth having another issue for this (I’d like to be able to fix it too but don’t have a pull request in the queue for it, so an issue will keep it from getting lost).