Tuesday, 4 September 2007

Switching Frame book applications with DITA+FMx

DITA+FMx does not (yet) include the Build FM DITABook menu option to build a FrameMaker book from a DITAMap. This is apparently due to licensing problems between Abobe and Leximation, the author of DITA+FMx.
However, you can still use the option provided you keep your old DITA+FM plugin installed and follow the instructions described in the DITA+FMx documentation at http://docs.leximation.com/dita-fmx/0.01/

When you generate a Book, an option in the ditafm/DITAfm.ini file controls which structured application FrameMaker calls to perform the generation of FrameMaker files. To switch between different applications, you have to comment out the lines that don't apply. For example:

;DITABOOK-StructApp=DITA-FMx-Book
;DITABOOK-StructApp=DITA-Book-FM
DITABOOK-StructApp=Gemalto-DITA-Book-FM

In this example, the semicolon (;) comments out the first two entries, so the third one is used. If you forget to comment out an application, the first entry is used by FrameMaker. The names of the structured applications are as defined in the structapps.fm file (File > Structure Tools > Edit Application Definitions, then look at the XMLApplication/ApplicationName tag in the structure view).