Single sourcing from Frame and a wiki ... or something ...

[Roger Shuttleworth]

Hi Rebecca

While reading your post I was thinking, "XML" - and then you asked the question right at the end.

You don't say which wiki the engineers are using; that would be an important factor.

Some of what you are looking for can be done using FrameMaker and DITA. The engineers would soon learn the DTD (I'm told that engineers like learning stuff like that). You and your writers would have a significant learning curve too, and it would take several months to implement.

There is a plugin for Confluence wiki (DITA2Confluence) that will publish a ditamap and all its referenced content to wiki pages. But it is only a one-way transfer; you can't capture changes made on the wiki back to your FrameMaker source. And in the meantime Confluence 4 has switched from using wiki markup to using XHTML, so the plugin may not work with the current version of Confluence. (I'm sure there is work going on to remedy that.). The pathway from FrameMaker to wiki is not too difficult; it is the other direction (your engineer source) that will be the problem.

In your situation I would be looking at more radical solutions. What about publishing your user manual through the wiki? Most wikis can output PDF too, though it will not be as pretty as that provided by FrameMaker. Instead of sticking with FrameMaker, I'd be thinking in terms of a text-based source (XHTML or XML), and tools that can convert from wiki to XML. One such is the Mylyn Project at http://www.eclipse.org/mylyn. Seehttp://greensopinion.blogspot.com/2008/11/mylyn-wikitext-targets-oasis-dita.html.

Of course, if the XML ends up being DITA or DocBook, you can publish that through FrameMaker (or lots of other tools).

I hope other list members will be able to add to these thoughts... You could also try asking the question on the Yahoo dita-users group at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/. There are people there with all kinds of experience, and I'm sure someone will have some suggestions.

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: rebecca officer [mailto:rebecca.officer at alliedtelesis.co.nz]
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Sent: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 02:02:53 -0400
Subject: Single sourcing from Frame and a wiki ... or something ...

        
Hi everyone  
   
Our docs team (4 of us) creates a many-thousand-page multi-chapter user manual in unstructured Frame. Lots of tables and cross-refs. Conditional text used to publish several variants. Published as PDFs a couple of times a year, delivered online.   
   
And the engineers (about 80) have a wiki that's a mish-mash of internal feature development info, some of which ends up in the user manual.  
   
I've been asked to make the user manual and the internal docs use the same source, which both writers and engineers would write. We want to work collaboratively, stop duplicating effort and come much closer to real-time updates.  
   
I'll need to include version control, content re-use, status tagging (e.g. draft/final), read-only access, and delivery as PDF and HTML. While I'm at it, I'd like to do automated builds and publish ebooks.  
   
The engineers would like the wiki to be the source. The writers want to stay with FM. I'm prepared to make everyone change tools (*grin*) but only if we have to.  
   
As a complicating factor, the engineers are all on Linux. Getting an FM licence per engineer would blow my budget (Adobe, how about selling a site licence???), and they'd have to run it in Virtual Box. I'm not seeing a happy ending there.  
   
I've got plenty of implementation time and can lay my mitts on a programmer or two. Budget's not yet set but prob around $20K.  
   
So ...  
   
Does anyone know of a good tool for round-tripping Framemaker <--> Wiki?   
   
Should I be looking at XML?  
   
Any other thoughts on how I should tackle this?  
   
Many thanks
Rebecca  
   
   
   
   
NOTICE: This message contains privileged and   confidential
information intended only for the use of the addressee
named   above. If you are not the intended recipient of
this message you are hereby   notified that you must not
disseminate, copy or take any action in reliance   on it.
If you have received this message in error please
notify Allied   Telesis Labs Ltd immediately.
Any views expressed in this message are   those of the
individual sender, except where the sender has the
authority   to issue and specifically states them to
be the views of Allied Telesis   Labs.      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.frameusers.com/pipermail/framers-frameusers.com/attachments/20120627/de852a2c/attachment.htm>