[Framers] Starting DITA 1.2

Roger Shuttleworth shuttie27 at gmail.com
Thu Jun 28 02:51:56 PDT 2018 

Further to Scott's excellent advice:

There are two separate issues here. One is DITA, and the other is 
structured authoring in FrameMaker. Of these, you should tackle the 
latter first. DITA is only one of the possible structures that you could 
use; the important first step is to bring your mindset to think in terms 
of structure as well as content. I am very grateful for a course that I 
attended many years ago on structured writing. On that course, having 
determined what our document structure should be, we simply used 
paragraph and character formats to define it by making full use of the 
"Next Pfg Format" property in the Paragraph Designer.

So you should constantly be asking yourself, "What IS this?" as well as 
"What should it say?" From your original post, it sounds as though you 
already have the concepts of structure in your existing manuals - 
consistent use of paragraph formats, and so on.

Having got that mindset under control, it was relatively easy to ensure 
that all new content was written in a structured way, still using 
unstructured FM. And that, in turn, made it easier to transition to 
structured FM later on.

My advice would be to try writing some sample topics using the default 
DITA 1.2 application that is supplied with FM. (Caveat: My latest 
version is FM11, so I'm assuming that it is the same in newer versions.)

Another important piece of advice (IMHO): Forget about XML for the time 
being. You can use DITA or any other structure without having to convert 
it to XML. I did that for a couple of years before even attempting to 
create XML. XML output is not without its own challenges, which you 
don't need at this stage.

Since you are documenting programming commands, most of your topics will 
be DITA <reference> topics. You can wrap these in higher-level <topic> 
topics, keeping them all in one document. That is a whole lot easier 
than creating hundreds of standalone topic files - that can come later 
on. So forget about ditamaps for now.

I hope this helps.

Some versions back Adobe supplied with FM a structured authoring 
"cookbook", which was a tutorial with a set of files that you could work 
on. It was a great learning tool. Unfortunately, in their wisdom they 
discontinued it, but someone on the list may be able to supply you with 
it - I think it was pre-FM9.

Regards,

Roger


On 27/06/2018 19:34, Scott Prentice wrote:
> Hi C2...
>
> That's a big question. Not one that can be answered properly via email.
>
> First .. read up on basic DITA concepts. Don't focus on what you want 
> to do with it and how you can change it. Learn the fundamentals of 
> DITA and structured authoring in FrameMaker. Here are a couple places 
> to start (other people will likely have other ideas too) ..
>
> - http://www.publishingsmarter.com/resources/books-and-articles
> - https://www.scriptorium.com/learning-dita/
>
> Also .. you may want to get on the framemaker-dita (Yahoo) maillist, 
> you may get more help there.
>
> When reading about DITA concepts, don't worry about finding 
> information about FrameMaker and DITA .. the concepts apply equally to 
> all editors. Once you learn the basics of the topic and map models, 
> you can focus on how you work with those models in FrameMaker. 
> Similarly, you can learn about structured authoring in FrameMaker 
> without focusing on DITA. DITA is just one model that you can use in 
> FrameMaker, the basics of structured authoring in FrameMaker are the 
> same regardless of the model. There are FM/DITA specific issues, but 
> once you need to worry about that you'll be further down the path.
>
> Once you've learned a bit about DITA and start to feel comfortable 
> creating basic topics and maps, you may want to consider trying to 
> modify the elements and model .. try to avoid that as long as 
> possible. Just work with what's there .. really. You'll be better off.
>
> In order to modify the model you should create your own structure 
> application then modify that. Don't modify the default structure 
> applications in FrameMaker. You *will* break things (everyone does), 
> and if you don't have the default apps available to use, you'll be in 
> trouble.
>
> Take this slow, and you'll find that DITA can be very powerful .. just 
> don't try to rush things.
>
> Cheers,
> ...scott
>
>
>
> On 6/27/18 11:04 AM, cuc tu wrote:
>> Hello Frame-users,
>>
>> I’m not familiar with structuring authoring, so hoping to get some 
>> guidance on creating DITA reference topics of programming commands. 
>> I'm spending a lot of time searching for help and not getting very 
>> far for the time I'me spending.
>>
>> First, I wonder if there are good samples to review of something 
>> similar.
>>
>> Next, I’m unsure of what would be an appropriate high level element 
>> structure.
>>
>> My main question is how should all the content blocks be structured 
>> and under what elements? From my perspective, is the whole chapter 
>> wrapped inside a reference element, with more nested reference 
>> elements for each main command grouping, and then each command yet 
>> another nested reference element? I know Frame limits the valid 
>> elements, but there are so many choices.
>>
>> Our manuals have a common unstructured layout, similar to the default 
>> FM document. The programming chapter of commands simply has a title, 
>> H1, text description and a bullet list of links to all H1 sections. 
>> Each H1 section describe its group of commands, then we use the 
>> command syntax as a heading followed by a series of heading run-ins 
>> for each relevant program item that needs to be described. For example:
>>
>> Chapter title
>> H1 Intro
>> Body description
>> links
>>
>> Calculate Subsystem
>> Text description of this system.  May include bullet lists, tables, etc.
>> :CALCulate:POWer:LIMit <numeric_value> {DBM}
>> :CALCulate:POWer:LIMit?
>> Title: Power Limit
>> Description: Sets and queries the amplitude power limit.
>> Parameters: <numeric_value> {DBM}
>> Query Return: Numeric (dBm)
>> Default Value: 10 dBm
>> Default Unit: dBm
>> Range: -200 dBm to 200 dBm
>>
>> There will be many subsystems and thousands of commands. They each 
>> have various items to describe, not all exactly the same set.
>>
>> I’m looking at a DITA 1.2 reference topic under the software domain, 
>> since I found the cmdname element. Where are the DTD and EDD and 
>> other support files for this topic type? I searched the program files 
>> for all .DTD and none of them have that element name (they didn’t 
>> have anything I expected). Also, the saved XML file specifies: 
>> <!DOCTYPE reference PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Reference//EN" 
>> "technicalContent/dtd/reference.dtd" []
>>
>> I want to modify the structure to remove most of the elements since 
>> we won’t use them (I’m sure the help will describe that).
>>
>> Why is only the simpletable element available? Is that an FM12 
>> limitation or restricted by the topic type?
>>
>> Thanks C2
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>> This message is from the Framers mailing list
>>
>> Send messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com
>> Visit the list's homepage at  http://www.frameusers.com
>> Archives located at 
>> http://www.mail-archive.com/framers%40lists.frameusers.com/
>> Subscribe and unsubscribe at 
>> http://lists.frameusers.com/listinfo.cgi/framers-frameusers.com
>> Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> This message is from the Framers mailing list
>
> Send messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com
> Visit the list's homepage at  http://www.frameusers.com
> Archives located at 
> http://www.mail-archive.com/framers%40lists.frameusers.com/
> Subscribe and unsubscribe at 
> http://lists.frameusers.com/listinfo.cgi/framers-frameusers.com
> Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com

More information about the Framers mailing list