Using DITA with FrameMaker
Overview of DITA
- DITA = Darwin Information Typing Architecture
- An XML format that focuses on topic-based organization of content.
- Supports efficient content reuse with two unique constructs: topic maps and content references.
- Topic maps ("DITA maps") let you arrange DITA topic files and maps into components and deliverables (think TOC).
- Content references ("conrefs") let you reference other elements (any level) and reuse that content in other files.
- The concept of specialization lets you create new elements and content models based on the core elements (this is where the idea of inheritance comes in, hence the name "Darwin").
- The DITA Open Toolkit (DITA-OT) is a set of XSLT and Ant scripts that generate various types of output from DITA topics and DITA maps.
Brief History of DITA
- March 2001: IBM introduced DITA as a series of developerWorks articles and a small download package of sample processing tools.
- April 2004: IBM formally released DITA to the open source community and handed over control to the newly formed OASIS Technical Committee.
- February 2005: DITA Open Toolkit project initiated on Sourceforge.
- June 2005: DITA 1.0 is approved as a an OASIS standard.
- August 2005: DITA Open Toolkit 1.1 is released.
- August 2007: DITA 1.1 is approved as an OASIS standard.
Overview of XML and FrameMaker
- First version of FM to support structured authoring (and SGML) was version 3.0 in 1991, making FrameMaker one of the oldest structured authoring tools available today.
- FM lets you author XML content in a "WYSIWYG" view; you can't edit the XML tags directly (it does provide a tags view).
- FM uses a "structure application" to define the rendered appearance of the XML elements.
- At the core of the structure application is an EDD (Element Definition Document) and a formatting template.
- The EDD provides instructions on how to programmatically map the styles defined in the template with the elements in the XML file (CSS on steroids).
- A structure application can also make use of an "import/export client" which allows for programmatic manipulation of the elements on their way into or out of FM.
- Additionally, a structure application can make use of XSLT scripts on import or export from FM.
History of DITA and FrameMaker
- September 2005: Adobe shipped FM7.2 which included a DITA application. It was hard to use and didn't support key DITA features (conrefs and maps), it wasn't well received.
- December 2005: Leximation started development of a DITA plugin for FM that would support all of DITA's features without adding proprietary content so the resulting XML files could be shared with people using other XML editors.
- September 2006: Adobe licensed DITA-FM from Leximation for use as the DITA Application Pack for FM7.2.
- September 2007: Adobe released FM8 which includes an updated version of DITA-FM. (They simultaneously pulled the DITA App Pack and referred people to FM8.)
- September 2007: Leximation and Silicon Publishing released DITA-FMx for FM7.2.
- October 2007: Adobe released the DITA Open Toolkit plugin allowing output through the OT from FM8.
Demo
- Use FM7.2 with DITA-FMx for most of demo but wrap up by showing FM8 features.
- Create some sample files (using StructureSnippets).
- Add index entries, conrefs, code samples, graphics, etc.
- Create a map file, add topics to the map, then generate CHM output through the OT, show parent/child links.
- Edit map to add related links, then generate CHM output again.
- Add some attribute values and filter with ditavals, generate CHM output again.
- Generate PDF output through Open Toolkit.
- Generate FM book from map and create PDF through FM.
- Show filtering with FrameSLT.
- Show overview of FM8 features.