Seeking inputs on desired features in FrameMaker

[Roger Shuttleworth]

Hello Ant

I'm not sure I understand your comment. First, there is no "importance" element in DITA. So I presume you mean the importance attribute, which is present on many DITA elements. It is designed for the exact purpose that you describe: according to the Language Specification, "applications may (but need not) use the importance value to highlight elements."

So if you mean that you want text within an element to appear in different colours based on the value of its importance attribute, that would have to be accomplished by using appropriate context rules in the EDD. Creating those rules is a simple matter for anyone who is familiar with EDDs. Once the rules are set, an author never needs "easy access to the DITA-related EDDs" - for that or any other reason. Only the application developer needs to access the EDD, and that is as easy as opening it in FrameMaker.

The only thing an author would do would be to:


* Select the element(s) in Structure View.
* Open the attribute editor.
* Assign the desired attribute value by choosing from a predefined list.


It seems to me that there is no reason why the project "may fall on the ability, or not, to alter the appearance (colour, etc.) of DITA output text based on the attribute value." That ability is there already, and is easy to make use of. It would take an application developer oh, maybe 30 minutes to set up the rules for you.

But perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you need...

Roger

Roger Shuttleworth
Technical Documentation
AV-BASE Systems Inc.
1000 Air Ontario Drive, Suite 200
London, Ontario
N5V 3S4
Tel. 519 691-0919 ext. 330
  _____  

From: ant at ant-davey.com [mailto:ant at ant-davey.com]
To: Alison Craig [mailto:Alison.Craig at ultrasonix.com], Reng, Dr. Winfried [mailto:wreng at tycoint.com], kverma at adobe.com [mailto:kverma at adobe.com]
Cc: framers at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers at lists.frameusers.com], frameusers-de at googlegroups.com [mailto:frameusers-de at googlegroups.com]
Sent: Sat, 28 Apr 2012 15:50:40 -0400
Subject: RE: Seeking inputs on desired features in FrameMaker

                   

                 May I add another feature request?  It has recently become apparent to me that a major UK project, proposing the use of DITA, may fall on the ability, or not, to alter the appearance (colour, etc.) of DITA output text based on the attribute value for the 'importance' element.             

              

     Easy access to the DITA-related EDDs is important to this project, and presumably to anyone else who has different levels of 'bad stuff will happen' warnings.        

              

     Regards,        

     Ant         



     > http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.           
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