Adobe announces FrameMaker DITA Application Pack

[Keith Soltys]

In a webinar today, Adobe announced and demoed the FrameMaker DITA 
Application Pack, an extension to FrameMaker that adds full DITA support 
to FrameMaker 7.2. Adobe did ship a DITA structured application with 
FrameMaker 7.2, but the application pack adds much more functionality, 
including a DITA menu, support for maps, relationship tables, conrefs, 
and ID generation. There will be online help and installation instructions.

Based on what I saw of the demo, this will make it much easier to author 
DITA-based content in structured FrameMaker. For example, if you add a 
topic reference to a map and the topic doesn't already exist, FrameMaker 
will create the topic and assign it a unique ID. If you double-click on 
a topic in a map, the topic opens for editing. If you create a conref to 
an element that doesn't have an ID, FrameMaker will generate the ID for you.

The Application Pack will be freely available for downloading by 
FrameMaker 7.2 users. It'll be in open beta in August, with a full 
release sometime later (no specific date was given). Adobe will also be 
releasing an S1000D Starter Kit, with will provide similar functionality 
for the S1000D users.

This is exciting news for both FrameMaker users and DITA devotees. It's 
clear that Adobe is finally devoting more development and marketing 
resources to FrameMaker. It will also make it easier for writers like 
myself, who don't have the resources of a documentation group with XML 
wizards on staff, to adopt structured authoring and DITA.

On a related front, they did say that there will be more FrameMaker 
webinars in the fall. They will make the first three webinars, including 
today's, available for online viewing sometime soon.

Regards
Keith