framers Digest, Vol 83, Issue 13

[Chris Despopoulos]

Rebecca asks:
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Hi guys

If you're planning to roundtrip through XML, with different authors
using different XML editors, you'd need to have all the formatting in
the EDD, right?

Or am I on completely the wrong track in my ignorance?

Thanks
Rebecca
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I think the question is a little bit off, and probably because the whole thread has not been clear or consistent on what is meant by "structure" or "formatting".  I would say that there should be no formatting in the XML.  In fact, the structural elements should be declared for their *structure* and not for the formatting you might think they imply.  Any formatting should be applied to the content at the last possible moment, and it should be applied according to rules about how to interpret the structure.  

So I was a major culprit in confusing the issue when I said you could create an EDD with attributes that named the formats you want.  That would break the rules because it expresses *formatting* within the *structure*.  In my defense, I only mentioned that as an absurd example.  But honestly, such a scheme would produce lousy XML -- either storing these formatting-only attributes in the XML, or losing the formatting instructions.

The bottom line is that XML is structured content.  No formatting.  FrameMaker adds formatting to structured content.  (It also maintains structure internally, and you can use it to edit structure and content.)  The way FrameMaker adds formatting to XML is to map formatting rules to the structure...  In the EDD.  You can apply formatting outside of that (use format catalogs, etc), but you get flaky results -- that's the issue that started this thread.  But if you exclude such bad user behavior, then in fact, the ONLY way for FrameMaker to apply formatting to structure is through the EDD.  So the answer to your question is a resounding YES.  
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