Resources to help a newbie create DITA documents in FrameMaker 10

[Scott Prentice]

Hi Robert...

It's unfortunate that you headed down the "Structured Application" path 
.. that has nothing to do with creating a DITA project .. that's how you 
create the files that allow you to author in an XML model like DITA or 
DocBook, but the DITA structured application has already been created 
and is available for you to use. Those docs are "developer" docs not 
"user" docs.

As you found, none of the documentation available at the location you 
reference has anything to do with DITA or how you'd use it in FM10 (I 
have no idea why Adobe still provides the "DITA Starter Kit for FM 7.2" 
.. yikes, talk about misleading).

If you'd only been pointed in the right direction, you may have found 
that it is actually very easy to create and maintain DITA files in 
FrameMaker ..

     File > New > DITA > <choose a topic type>

Setting up a DITA "project" is really the same in Frame as it is in all 
other DITA authoring tools. You create some topics, you create a map, 
then you arrange those topics in the map. You do need to have a rough 
idea as to how to arrange the elements in the topics and maps, but 
that's the same in all tools. If you're familiar with FM's structured 
authoring UI, you'll be in good shape. If not, that's something to read 
up on.

There are lots of places to find info on the concepts behind DITA 
authoring .. those will all apply to Frame as well as other editors. It 
would be really nice though if Adobe provided a "Quick Start Guide for 
DITA in Frame". Oh well .. maybe for the next release!  :o

Cheers,

...scott


On 5/17/12 4:27 PM, Robert Lauriston wrote:
> I've evaluated a number of DocBook and DITA authoring tools. With
> Oxygen XML, which is the easiest I've tried, I created a sample
> project and generated output within ten minutes. It took me somewhat
> longer in XMetal but it wasn't hard.
>
> FrameMaker 10 is by far the most opaque putative DocBook / DITA
> authoring tool I've looked at. The help resources are all for
> FrameMaker 7.x:
>
> http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/framemaker/?trackingid=ZLQL#xmldita
>
> The Using the DocBook Starter Kit and Using the DocBook Starter Kit
> guides are just a few pages of very abstract information. It
> references the Structured FrameMaker Developer’s Guide, which I guess
> has been supplanted by the "Structured Application Developer
> Reference." Neither those docs nor the sample files bundled with
> FrameMaker gave me any clue of how to create a project from scratch or
> port an existing unstructured FrameMaker doc.
>
> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 3:26 PM, Scott Prentice wrote:
>> I'm not terribly surprised about this. No, there's nothing very useful that ships with the product. There's a lot "out there" in blogs and wikis and maillists .. but unless you know where to look or who to ask, you're probably out of luck. Yes .. posting to the FM forum should have provided more than just a reference to the docs.
>>
>> The problem is that "creating a DITA project" in FrameMaker is really no different than doing that in any other XML authoring tool. You do need to understand the structured FrameMaker UI, but DITA is DITA regardless of the tool.
>>
>> I often answer those posts on the FM forum, don't know why I missed it.  :o
>>
>> ...scott
>>
>>
>> On 5/17/12 3:04 PM, Fei Min Lorente wrote:
>>
>> I was really surprised by the thread in the link below. I’d heard that Adobe added cookbooks and samples to the more recent versions of FrameMaker to help people get started with structure, and especially DITA. Is that all hype and no substance? Are you still hearing that people have trouble using DITA out of the box with FrameMaker 10?
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