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<font face="Verdana">It sounds like you need to read up on the
fundamentals of DITA. Would be more informative than what you'll
likely get from this list. This is a good place to start ..<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://dita.xml.org/book/dita-wiki-knowledgebase">http://dita.xml.org/book/dita-wiki-knowledgebase</a><br>
<br>
Fundamentally, DITA is all about organizing your content in
modular chunks called topics. A "topic" may be a generic model
called topic or a more specialized (restrictive) model called
concept, task, reference (or other). You assemble topics
(typically separate files, but you can have single files that
contain multiple topics) into hierarchies using a dita map. You
can further assemble hierarchies by having maps within maps .. it
all depends on how you want to arrange your content.<br>
<br>
One option for the top-most map is to use a map type called
"bookmap". A bookmap can have special elements that define groups
of topics as a chapter, appendix, or part, and you can add
frontmatter and backmatter elements that contain elements that
become your generated lists (toc, indexlist, etc).<br>
<br>
Within a topic you'll have a structure that provides for a title
(required), a short description (optional), some metadata (within
a prolog element), then a body element that contains the main
content of the topic. The markup within the body is very much like
HTML, you'll see elements like <p>, <ul>, <li>,
and within paragraphs you can have inline markup like <b>,
<i>, <ph>, and many others.<br>
<br>
Your best bet is to just use the New DITA File menu to create a
new topic (of any type) and give it a try. Don't worry about the
actual structured applications that are in use at this point,
you're getting way ahead of yourself.<br>
<br>
The default setup in FM (since FM10) is to have separate apps for
each topic type. This more closely mirrors the official DTD
structure, but makes it much harder for FM users. Figure out which
XML model you want to use, then you can decide how (or if) you
want to customize it.<br>
<br>
Remember that with DITA (XML in general), you really shouldn't
worry about what the documents look like when you're authoring,
you should only care what they look like when published. So you
should be able to use the default apps and models exactly as they
are, and just set up a publishing process that applies the right
templates and formatting.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
...scott<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</font>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 8/13/14 1:52 PM, Theresa de Valence
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:53EBD017.8010002@bstw.com" type="cite">On
8/13/2014 11:21 AM, Scott Prentice wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<br>
XML for sure, and personally I'd use DITA. DITA for 3 reasons ..
1) the
<br>
implementation of DocBook support has problems, and that may
cause you
<br>
trouble down the line, 2) you'll likely find more options for
DITA
<br>
support in the techcomm space, and 3) I like DITA better than
DocBook :)
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
OK, conceptually, I understand the value of dividing each part of
the document into a single-purpose element and that DITA might be
better than the mishmash of DocBook. However, when I look at the
DITA applications in structapps.fm, I cannot tell which
application is used for plain ordinary text (i.e. what consitutes
<para>). How does one use DITA for:
<br>
--Book
<br>
----Chapter
<br>
------Section
<br>
--------Body
<br>
<br>
Is this what the DITA map is?
<br>
[And here I thought we were going to have geographical maps in the
book 8-) ]
<br>
<br>
Thanks,
<br>
Theresa
<br>
P.S. I have ordered XML AND FRAMEMAKER by Kay Ethier but it won't
be here for several days
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
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