Hi all,

I have been trying to adjust my r/w rules, perhaps somebody has a hint for me.

What I need to do is save the placement of anchored frames for image elements (such as "in paragraph" or "beneath current line") when writing to XML. Vice versa the FM property should be retrieved when opening the XML file.

My idea was to write this into the outputclass attribute. However, it seems I was not able to fetch the correct FM property yet.

Any ideas (or better solutions altogether)?

Robert

***I suspect this might be an XSL-related solution***

I've inherited a client's xml structapp that goes out to XML quite nicely, but doesn't read in the requisite idref upon opening in FM11.

The read/write rules are fairly straightforward:

element "xref"

{

  is fm cross-reference element "XRef";

  attribute "xrefstyle" is fm property cross-reference format;

  attribute "linkend"           is fm property cross-reference id;

}

However, the linkend attribute is not populated upon opening, nor is the value (which is present in the XML file) passed as the cross-ref id into FM.

Anyone have a solution?

Could this be a result of XSL parsing, and might the XSL be dropping the attribute upon import prior to application of the RWR? I haven't dug into the import XSL yet, but suspect that's where I need to go.

-Matt

I need to create an Army Depot-Level maintenance manual using MIL-STD-2361 in structured FrameMaker. Does anyone know where I might find a template/EDD for this? If not, can anyone direct me to just the plain DTD? I will be creating XML and PDF files for output.

Thank you!

Hello,

First post on the forums in a long time, and first here altogether. I hope it's okay to jump in.

I have a bit of unstructured FM experience from several years ago and have been using Ventura since (13 years) for my company's books (longish directories--3,000+/volume). I've done some scripts in Ventura so have a little programming experience.

We're looking to switch to XML rather than the tagged text files Ventura can import because of its lack of support, problems possibly due to Win7, and the effort needed to maintain the import files. I've downloaded the FM 11 trial and have been experimenting a little with roundtripping XML and also importing what we already have in XML. So a few I'm sure very basic questions; and thanks in advance:

I've been going through the Adobe tutorials and whatever else I can find online. There don't seem to be any well-reviewed books on Amazon that deal with structured FM 9-11. Some that look promising for XML are about 10 years old--I don't think our needs are cutting edge so should I get something that old, or stick with newer even if there are complaints? Any recommendations? If I can get the hang of it with something that isn't FM specific will it be really hard to adapt that knowledge to FM?

I'm finding EDD, DTD, and Schema to be rather confusing. Would someone explain the difference in simple terms or point me to a video, etc? Assuming I'm starting with an XML file created for another purpose not meant for FM, do I need more than one of these? Do you do one first?

With Ventura if I want to have two discrete pieces of data (off the database) on the same line, say one left aligned and the other right aligned, the programmers put the two together with a tab, and that's controlled by a paragraph tag in Ventura with a right tab. With XML, if I'm understanding it correctly, you wouldn't do that in the XML file--I'm probably not ready to understand the method, just want to know if that's possible without doing something like having the second item's paragraph properties set to have no line break. If so, where would that be specified, EDD, DTD, etc?

Can XML into FM include graphics inline? How about an Excel chart?

Thank you,

Gary

Hello,

I have a ditamap that consists of files converted, using Mif2Go, to DITA 1.2 <concept> and <task> files. Each file is a heading from a single chapter in a manual.

The ditafm-output.ini has the following:

• TemplateDir=$STRUCTDIR\xml\DITA_1.2\app\technicalContent\template
• CompositeDocTemplate_1.2=ditabase.template.fm

I do not have each <concept> and <task> file wrapped in <dita>.

Questions:

• Is there anyway to tell FM to use the respective template for each root-level element? I looked in the FM 11 ini Reference and it appears the answer to that is no.
• If I do have to wrap the root elements in <dita>, is this considered a less than best practice?
• If I do have to wrap in <dita>, does anybody know of any potential issues with a CMS or whatever?

FYI1: We need to go with DITA 1.2, because down the road we are going to use the learning modules.

FYI2: I will be using RobeHelp to to create Web Help from imported book files.

To Scott Prentice: Are you coming out with DITA-FMx for DITA 1.2 somewhere down the road?

Thanks,

Stan

Hi all,

We have Frame 11 and a doc set based on xDocbook 4.2 -- I know that's way back, but that's not our question.  :-)

We are adding support for a <refentry> element to our docs.  This exists in Docbook and appears in various parent elements, including a <chapter> element.  We need to insert it anywhere in a chapter.

Our Chapter General Rule has been quite simple: Title, Section+

Now we just want the ability to add a RefEntry anywhere that we can add a Section.  I tried this, which seems logical:

Title, (Section | RefEntry)+

With this, we can insert one or more RefEntry elements as the first elements, but if we try to put one after a Section element, we get parsing errors that RefEntry is not allowed in a chapter.  I've tried editing the EDD in numerous ways and have not been able to support a RefEntry to appear anywhere.

I believe -- from what I have read and from looking at the DTD -- that the Docbook DTD should support a RefEntry at any location. I have not tried to customize the chapter element in the DTD regarding the refentry element, although we did add a <textinset> element some years ago, so that the primary content of a chapter in the DTD now looks like this:

<!ENTITY % bookcomponent.content

          "((%divcomponent.mix;)+,

          (sect1*|(%refentry.class;)*|simplesect*|textinset*|section*))

          | (sect1+|(%refentry.class;)+|simplesect+|section+)">

And the chapter element itself is this (default Docbook):

<!ENTITY % chapter.element "INCLUDE">

<![%chapter.element;[

<!ELEMENT chapter (chapterinfo?,

                    (%bookcomponent.title.content;),

                    (%nav.class;)*,

                    tocchap?,

                    (%bookcomponent.content;),

                    (%nav.class;)*)>

One thing that I don't understand is that the refentry element is always in parens, unlike all the others.

In case anyone can help with this, I think I need to paste the error (sorry, this is an eyeful, but it reveals the details of the entire chapter element):

-----------------

Element 'refentry' is not valid for content model '(chapterinfo?,title,subtitle?,titleabbrev?,((toc|lot|index|glossary|bibliography))*,tocc hap?,((((textinset|calloutlist|glosslist|itemizedlist|orderedlist|segmentedlist|simplelist |codeannotlist|variablelist|caution|important|note|tip|warning|literallayout|line|programl isting|programlistingco|screen|screenco|screenshot|synopsis|cmdsynopsis|funcsynopsis|class synopsis|fieldsynopsis|constructorsynopsis|destructorsynopsis|methodsynopsis|formalpara|pa ra|simpara|address|blockquote|graphic|graphicco|mediaobject|mediaobjectco|informalequation |syntax|informalfigure|informaltable|equation|example|figure|table|msgset|procedure|sideba r|qandaset|anchor|bridgehead|remark|editorialnote|highlights|abstract|authorblurb|epigraph |indexterm|beginpage|tocchap|refentry))+,(sect1*|refentry*|simplesect*|textinset*|section* ))|sect1+|refentry+|simplesect+|section+),((toc|lot|index|glossary|bibliography))*)'

----------------

Thanks in advance for any help, I appreciate it.

- Shelley

Shelley Hoose

RogueWave Software

My office recently upgraded to FrameMaker 11 in a Windows 7 environment. We previously used FrameMaker 8 | Windows XP.

We are in the process of replacing the following fonts:

Courier

Zapf Dingbats

With the following:

Courier New

ITC Zapf Dingbats Std Medium

I am having problems with Zapf Dingbats being replaced with ITC Zapf Dingbats Std Medium. I have used the fonts pod to update these fonts for all of the appropriate FrameMaker files.

We use an automated process to create the FrameMaker files. The process involves importing XML feeds into Structured FrameMaker 11 using an automated process. After the XML has been imported, it is fully formatted in FrameMaker 11. After I select the xml file to import and the automated process is about to import the xml file into FrameMaker 11, the FrameMaker console is displaying this message:

The “Zapfdingbats” font is not available.

It will be replaced by “AdobePiStd”.

The “Zapfdingbats” font is not available.

It will be replaced by “AdobePiStd”.

The “Courier” font is not available.

It will be replaced by “Courier New”.

When I view the fonts in this newly created FrameMaker 11 file in the font pod, the “AdobePiStd” font is displayed as part of the fonts in this file. I did update the Zapf Dingbats occurrences in the FrameMaker template to ITC Zapf Dingbats Std Medium and I updated all of the other systems files as well. I did update the FrameMaker Edd.

I looked at the maker.ini file and I noticed the following code:

; Font Entries Added in Frame 8 due to Font Set Changes

Zapfdingbats, *,*= Adobe Pi Std,*,*

In the automated process that I am using, when the xml feed is about to be imported is this line of code causing FrameMaker 11 to override the font changes that I made to all of the FrameMaker 11 files? Should I change this line of code to this in order to fix the problem:

Zapfdingbats, *,*= ITC Zapf Dingbats Std,*,*

Any help that you can give me will be appreciated.

Hi all,

currently I am trying to format the DITA <lq> element (long quote) to display a line above and below its content. For the line below I have tried to use a suffix rule in the EDD. I can assign any text and character formatting below the long quote without problems, but Framemaker ignores any imaged frames that I define there.

The EDD does not allow the definition of a frame directly in the suffix rule, so I am using a format change list.

This is the suffix rule in the <lq> element. It refers to the format chanhe list "line_below" (the EDD language is German):

This is the corresponding format change list that defines a frame below.

If I define any other formatting in the format change list such as red text color there are no problems at all, only the image frames are ignored.

Does anybody have an idea how to solve this?

Robert

I am using prefix and suffix rules in my EDD to make things easier for the author (and standardize some headings and parts of names). Now I need to write the content into XML and my prefixes and suffixes do not get pushed into the content on the XML side. I do not find any reference to prefix and suffix in the read-write rules. Is there a way to let FM write the prefixes into either an attribute or the content of an element when writing to XML? I am not interested in round-tripping here, so even if the method is more or less destructive, I would be more than happy to know about it. The only other option I see is adding more work to the extendscript that I am using to prepare the materials for writing to XML.

Thanks

Jang

Hello,

I'm new to structured FrameMaker and to DITA. I'm using TCS5.

I'm having to compile a set of training materials that include video tutorials generated out of Captivate. I'm thinking I might have a ditamap of the text tutorial with all its concepts and tasks as topics, and then a separate topic at the end with the video, to which the others could link. I'd prefer to use the mp4 format rather than the outdated swf.

I've found how to do this by saving the ditamap as a Frame book with composite fm files. Of course I can just import the mp4 into the corresponding fm file. But this import is then not reflected or present in the pure dita topic and that makes exchangeability and re-use problematic. Ideally I would like to be able to do everything in pure dita without having to pass through fm files, much harder to maintain.

I've seen there is an "object" element in DITA which can be used to include video streaming, but I can't for the life of me find intelligible instructions on how to use it. The mp4 files would be in a folder of a local directory, or eventually in a sub-folder of our company web-site host.

Many thanks to anyone who can help.

EFR

Cambridge Imaging Systems

Hi,

I am getting a repeatable crash (but with different error codes) when doing the following:

1. Open a previously saved FM 11 MIF file.
2. Save as FM 11 binary.
3. Close MIF file (without saving)
4. Open FM binary file
5. Set View->"Element Boundaries (as Tags)"
6. Save file.
7. Close file.
8. Re-open file.
9. Crash
10. Frame then has to be killed with task manager.

If I change step 5 to "delete some text" without showing tags, then the document re-opens correctly.

Internal Error: 11024, 4780356, 4780650, 7524149

Internal Error: 11024, 13431108, 13431402, 16174901

FM 11.0.2.384 (no extra plugins)

Windows NT 6.1 (major.minor.build: 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1)

Has anyone else seen this with showing element boundaries as tags?

Regards,

Dave

Dear all,

I am working a new documentation development, and completed the outline with execl worksheet.

Is it possible to generate .ditamap automatically based on the execl worksheet?

If so, how ?

ps: the tool version is FM10

Thanks in advance.

Hi guys,

I'm struggling here with some very strange behavior of FM11.

I've got a book (unstructured) with multiple FM binaries (structured).

The first book component is the front cover with some inlay pages including a self generated TOC (out of cross references to the start and end pages).

This book needs to be printed and contains 48 pages total, including the cover as the first and last book component.

Now the first component contains 3 pages and a double sided layout using several self defined master pages (I know there's an issue with deleting surplus pages with no left/right MP).

But that's not exactly my problem.

The problem arises when I try to refresh the book. There's a blank page being created in the first book component, which I got rid of in the first place.

That wouldn't be much of a problem since I can delete that page manually (and it keeps being deleted if I don't refresh anything).

But the real issue is, that the references are updated AFTERWARDS, meaning all page references within the book are one page ahead.

This is unacceptable, as it spans all references in the whole document, which are wrong due to this.

Is there any way I can get FM to not create this surplus blank page?

I'm tight on schedule and cleaning up the mess my boss left me behind with this document,, so quick answers are really appreciated.

-Alex

Pls see the title. There are hundreds of elements/paragraphs.

Getting an error while generating TOC in structured framemaker 11

I am trying to add a "PRELIMINARY" watermark to every page of a structured document in FrameMaker 7.1.  I added the text in a text box to the master pages, but the graphics boxes in my document block out the watermark.  I tried placing the text in a graphics box, but that gave the same results.  Is there a way to bring a watermark to the front of graphics boxes?

I have been informed by a colleague that InDesign possesses structured authoring tools to generate XML.  My organization is presently using Framemaker+SGML authoring to generate structured markup language.  We have some very mature templates that utilize edds and dlls (generated from the FDK), to verify and validate tagged information at a somewhat intricate level.  My question is can InDesign do what Framemaker does, as far as structured authoring. Can it tag information any easier or faster.  This question comes from a disgruntled user who's responsibility it is to generate the markup. I have no previous exposure to InDesign.

Hi guys,

Is there anyway I can unwrapp multiple elements in one go using Adobe Framemaker 10?

I wrap all changes I make to a doucment in a "Change" element and then unwrap it before I start a new update. I currently do this using the following steps:

• Go to Edit > Find/Change… or press Ctrl+F to bring up the Find/Change dialogue box.

• Change the Find option to “Element”; this will bring up a Find Element dialogue box.

• Type “Change” in the Element Tag option and select Set and the user will be returned to the Find/Change dialogue box.

• Select Find ensuring Book is checked in the Look in: section.

• The Find/Change dialogue box, set up as mention above, will take the user to all the “Change” elements in the document.

• Once each change element is found they will be highlighted in the Structure View tree.

• Each element will need to be unwrapped. This can be done by right clicking the highlighted element and selecting Unwrap.

It works but just seems to take a long time and I was wondering if there is a quicker way to uwrap all the "change" elements in one go.

Thanks in advance.

Rgds

Anthony

[Topic moved to Structured Forum]

I know the error is caused by using a character definition that uses the Courier font (indicating 'user input' in a technical documentation document). FM indicates that Courier is an available font.