[Framers] XML Requirements

[Chris Despopoulos]

The point of XML is that it's a data format that you can process.  But the specific STRUCTURE of the XML for a given use is not preordained.  It's up to your team to work out the best XML structure to use. XML includes tooling that you can use to transform XML from one structure to another, and even from one format to another.  Look at XSLT...  XML Style Language Transform

FrameMaker XML can read that data in whatever structure you choose, and map it to the FrameMaker constructs for a document.  BUT...  You have to do some work to implement that mapping (the so-called FrameMaker Structured Application).
Given these two points:
1) Your developers should be able to devise whatever XML suits them best, and you should be able to transform it into something that works for you.  So long as they comply with their XML rules, and you have implemented a transform that covers each of their rules, they can send you anything, and you can make it work.
2) Given the above, you can transform their XML into DITA, and you can pull that DITA into your docs.  You would need to already have a DITA structured application, and you would need to include an XSLT transform in the chain that can read their XML and turn it into DITA.  Once you implement that, anybody can use it without thinking.
3) XSLT can transform XML from one XML structure to another (from the developers' format into DITA), or it can transform from one format to another...  From XML to HTML, XML to JSON, XML to PDF, or even XML to MIF.  That last option might be interesting to you...  You can produce an XSLT script that reads their XML, and produces a valid MIF segment, and then import that MIF into a document or book.  In that case, you don't need to produce a structured application, and all your current templates will just work.
4) Continuing on 3 above, you should look into MML...  Maker Markup Language.  This is an abbreviated form of MIF.  Adobe stopped updating it some time around version 5...  That means you can't produce any document objects that Frame Technology or Adobe introduced after they stopped updating MML.  But maybe you don't need those.  You should ask the more current FrameMaker gurus whether MML is still in the code, and whether they know how to make a valid MML file.  Transforming XML to MML would be easier than XML to MIF.
5) If you were previously using HTML with no problems, you could implement an XSLT script that transforms their XML into the HTML that you know and love.  

6) BTW, doesn't FrameMaker have a Paste Special that can paste HTML into a structured document?  If so, then you should be able to use FrameMaker scripting to open the HTML file as text, copy the contents, open a structured file, and paste special.  Rick Quatro probably knows about this.  Or...  If they produce valid XHTML, then you could use XSLT to achieve the same.

On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 2:36 PM, cuc tu <cuc2u at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Our software team has said they are going to switch their input from plainly formatted HTML to XML. I'm hoping to get some advice on what should be required from them. I am only familiar with unstructured Frame and so far we have manually processed the entire content dump for each update (and could probably continue that way).  Also, I do not know what the software team thinks XML structure is like. I suspect it will be just like the HTML, a series of nested open/close tags, just as is the HTML. I suspect they will not get on with any kind of semantic mark-up.
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> The content is very similar to a dictionary where you have a term and a number attributes. My first thought is to consider Lightweight DITA, but that might be too much to get set up, and it does not fit with everything else so I'm wondering if there is a particular structure we should suggest, and one that can be leveraged somehow by FrameMaker? (the dev team is already down on FM when they learned it cannot simply open HTML files and display readable content, or I don't know how).