My FrameMaker Development Kit (FDK) clients were originally developed for FrameMaker 7 using Microsoft Visual C++. They always seemed to work fine on FrameMaker 8 too, but I baulked at upgrading Visual C++ because it was so expensive. However, I do get a lot of requests for FM8-specific versions of the EZVars clients, so over the Christmas holidays I finally got round to the upgrade.
Upgrading was actually a lot easier, and cheaper, than I imagined.
The first nice surprise was that Microsoft have released a free version of Visual C++, "Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition". Bit of a mouthful, but it has all the functionality you need to create and compile FDK clients, and is compatible with FrameMaker 8.0.
The second nice surprise was that I needed to make just a couple of minor modifications to get the clients working in the new environment:
- In Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > VC++ Directories, add the FDK8\include and FDK8\lib directories.
- In the versioninfo.rc resource file, change all references to "afxres.h" to "windows.h". (This file is only needed if your client displays dialog boxes or you want the client to auto-install itself in the fminit\Plugins folder without needing be registered in the maker.ini file).
Recompile, and away you go...
