Modularised EDDs?

[Hedley Finger]

Martin, Keith, and others:

Yes, Scott's answer is what I was after -- using text insets to build 
modular EDDs to simplify maintenance and avoid duplicating element 
substructures and attributes over and over in different locations on 
the master element tree.  As you point out, provided that a test 
inset's root element fits nicely under an ancestor in the host 
document, you can indeed use boilerplate in a document.  However, FM 
is going to complain about the structure of the text inset source not 
being conformant to an EDD.  I believe that there may be a way around 
this but don't know what it is.

Regards,
Hedley

At Thursday, 28/02/2008, 03:56 AM;, you wrote:
>Yes .. you can do this, and it works quite well (as long as you 
>don't get too carried away with the modularization). A FM binary 
>file can have any element at the root .. it may be "invalid" but it 
>will open fine and if it's imported into a container EDD will work 
>fine. Just keep in mind that if you update one of the insets, you do 
>still need to open the "root" EDD and import that file into the 
>template. Using this technique along with variables to define chunks 
>of the EDD is a good approach for EDD maintenance.
>Note that this is how the structapp stub files have been implemented 
>in DITA-FMx .. the stub files themselves are invalid, but when 
>imported as an inset into the structapps file, work fine.
>Cheers,
>Scott Prentice
>Leximation, Inc.
>www.leximation.com
>+1.415.485.1892
>
>
>Hedley Finger wrote:
>>Lynne Price, Kay Whatley and others:
>>
>>The DITA DTDs are modularised to allow ready re-use, specialisation 
>>and maintenance.
>>
>>Is there any way to create a modularised EDD, with a skeleton host 
>>file and modules imported as text insets?  I have been studying the 
>>Adobe documentation for developing structured applications but 
>>cannot find any reference to using text insets in this way.  I read 
>>somewhere a couple of years ago that EDD fragments always require a 
>>root element that matches an element in the main host EDD skeleton, 
>>which would rather undermine this idea.  But perhaps there is a 
>>special root element that can map onto ANY element in the host EDD 
>>-- a new feature in FM8?
>>
>>It seems to me that both the Adobe and Leximation EDDs could 
>>benefit from modularisation that exactly maps onto the *.dtd and 
>>*.mod files of the DITA schemas/DTDs.
>>
>>Regards,
>>Hedley
>>
>>
>>--
>>Hedley Stewart Finger
>>28 Regent Street   Camberwell VIC 3124   Australia
>>Tel. +61 3 9809 1229   Mobile +61 412 461 558,
>>E-mail <mailto:hfinger at handholding.com.au>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>--
>Hedley Stewart Finger
>28 Regent Street   Camberwell VIC 3124   Australia
>Tel. +61 3 9809 1229   Mobile +61 412 461 558,
>E-mail <mailto:hfinger at handholding.com.au>