DITA "tutorial" fails or is it me?

You're right about the doc I am using, it's the one at
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FrameMaker/8.0/structapp_dev.pdf

It's not a tutorial in the ordinary sense, but it is a cook book for a simple project. The place I think the problem lies is on page 18 (pdf page 32) where it says:

"9. The initial structure is now complete, so you can test it by importing the EDD into your first
template.

"10. If you already have a template, open it. Otherwise open a new empty FrameMaker document.

"Test the structure

"1. Import the element definitions from the EDD: File > Import > Element Definitions..."

I believe there is magic in step 10 above, but I cannot figure out what it is.

I am familiar enough with FrameMaker to know what a template is, but if the term means something different from those I've used since version 4.3, I can't determine how.

I chose File -> New -> Document, then clicked Portrait to get an empty doc, et voilà! The import went about as poorly as you might expect for a first effort, but I got everything corrected. The import into the empty doc was also troublesome, but that, too, is overcome.

When I have the Elements window open, and click in any 'graf, the only option displayed is "Document".

The Paragraph catalog is unchanged from the default, i.e., there are no tags that reflect anything from the EDD. Applying any of these tags does just what it has always done, but it does not pull the definitions in the EDD.

So I'm puzzled. It's not as if I'm a neophyte in the FrameMaker/Tech Writer world I've been doing this for 23 years.

Hi Le Sellers...

Based on your description of the documentation, I'm assuming that this is the structapp dev guide for FM8(?). I must say that I've not personally tried this, so can't say where you might have strayed. But, first, when I look at this documentation I don't see a DITA tutorial .. this looks to be a generic structure, but it's not DITA (a full DITA application is provided, and you can clone that folder and mess with it to see how things work if needed).

If you have done everything properly, you won't necessarily see anything in the Structure View until you add elements .. by default it would be empty. If the document is structured, you should see available root elements in the Element Catalog (the top-most button on the right side of a document window .. looks like this "[ ]"). Insert one of those elements and you *should* see something in the Structure View .. if not, you've definitely done something wrong.

Cheers,

...scott