About converting FM files to Dita

[Tim_Qiu]

Hi Guys,

To meet my customer's new request, we need to convert FM to Dita files. But I haven't done this process before, hope someone could provide some details about this. Thanks very much.

[AxialInfo]

Tim, unfortunately this is an impossibly huge topic to address in a forum posting, I don't think you'll get much advice because there are just too many aspects to consider. This is especially the case when you're converting already existing FM files as opposed to starting with DITA "from scratch".

A good place to get some FM+DITA information would be the various FM training companies, for example

http://www.scriptorium.com/

http://www.leximation.com/dita-fmx/

Scriptorium and Adobe have a free online a DITA seminar June 23, for more information and to register see the Adobe site:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1756579&loc=en_us

There's also an AdobeTV program about structured authoring with FM,:

Structured Authoring, XML and DITA now live on AdobeTV

This new show  is dedicated to all things Structured Authoring, including  migrating  from an Unstructured Environment, benefiting from XML and the DITA   standard in general.

To view, click here:

http://tv.adobe.com/show/structured-authoring-xml-and-dita/

Also, you might check the FrameMaker Structured forum for more information,

http://forums.adobe.com/community/framemaker/framemaker_structured

Edit: another good starting point:

http://justwriteclick.com/2007/07/24/frame-8-is-here-conversion-or-migration-from-unstructured-framemaker-to-dita/

Sheila

[Tim_Qiu]

Thanks very much, Sheila.

[yves.barbion]

Hi Tim

To convert Fm files to DITA, you may want to use some Fm plugins:

• DITA-FMx from Leximation
• MIF2 Go from Omni Systems
• Framescript

The process to convert Fm goes as follows:

1. Analyze (and clean up) your content.
2. Set up your MIF2Go conversion project.
3. Open your Fm book and save it as DITA topics. The book itself and the chapters will be converted to DITA maps.
4. Edit your DITA topics in FrameMaker with DITA-FMx.

You can use some Framescripts to automate things, for example rename topics, if necessary.

You can see a movie of how the process goes here:

http://youtu.be/IHUE0G_VhTU?hd=1

Kind regards

Yves Barbion

www.scripto.nu