Description: If your plug-in needs to define its own extension point in an XML file, add the string "_template" to the filename before the file suffix. During integration, this file will be processed like the built-in DITA-OT templates.

# Creating a new plug-in extension point

If your plug-in needs to define its own extension point in an XML file, add the string "`_template`" to the filename before the file suffix. During integration, this file will be processed like the built-in DITA-OT templates.

Template files are used to integrate most DITA-OT extensions. For example, the file dita2xhtml_template.xsl contains all of the default rules for converting DITA topics to XHTML, along with an integration point for plug-in extensions. When the integrator runs, the file dita2xhtml.xsl is recreated, and the integration point is replaced with references to all appropriate plug-ins.

To mark a new file as a template file, use the `<template>` element.

## Example

The following plug-in defines myTemplateFile_template.xsl as a new template for extensions. When the integrator runs, this will be used to recreate myTemplateFile.xsl, replacing any anchor points with the appropriate XSLT imports.

    <plugin id="com.example.new-extensions">
      <template file="myTemplateFile_template.xsl"/>
    </plugin>

Parent topic: Creating DITA-OT plug-ins