Adobe FrameMaker 8 plug-in for DITA Open Toolkit

[_Michael_Aimino_]

Has anyone gotten this plug-in to work? I'm getting error messages about unexpected version numbers.

[_Scott_Prentice_]

Hi Michael...

It does work, although the instructions are very confusing. The following KB topic may be of some use ..

http://kb.leximation.com/dfm/?kbid=7

Cheers,

...scott

[_Michael_Aimino_]

Thanks, Scott! I made some progress. The DitaOpenToolkit menu now appears on my FM menu. When I try to generate output, I get this in the log file:

BUILD FAILED
C:\DITA-OT1.4.2.1\ditafm-ant.xml:25: The following error occurred while executing this line:
C:\DITA-OT1.4.2.1\conductor.xml:10: The following error occurred while executing this line:
C:\DITA-OT1.4.2.1\build.xml:2: The following error occurred while executing this line:
C:\DITA-OT1.4.2.1\build_init.xml:35: java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/dita/dost/invoker/AntInvoker (Unsupported major.minor version 49.0)

Total time: 0 seconds

[_Scott_Prentice_]

Hi Michael...

If you're getting a DitaOpenToolkit menu, then you probably don't have the FM8 DITA installed (if it was installed, the OT plugin is added to the bottom of the DITA menu as "Generate Output"). If you're testing DITA-FMx (the likely reason that the default DITA plugin would be uninstalled), it comes with its own Generate Output command by default. Don't use the Adobe OT plugin with DITA-FMx (it might actually work, but it will confuse things further).

The Adobe OT plugin was created with OT 1.3.x in mind, and works reasonably well with that version of the OT. It does work with later versions, but you need to make sure that the environment variables that are defined by the startcmd.bat file are declared globally. The OT 1.3.x required this, but the OT 1.4.x provides a batch file with declares the variables within a shell. FM8 DITA requires these variables to be global.

To confuse things further .. DITA-FMx provides a setting in the ditafmx.ini file that lets you just point to the startcmd.bat batch file (actually a slightly modified version) so it's easy to use the OT 1.4.x.

Best of luck! :)

...scott

[_Michael_Aimino_]

OK, after some fussing around, the DitaOpenToolkit menu is gone and Generate Output appears on the DITA menu. I tried using both DITA and DITA-FMx to generate output and get the same error message as above.

[_Scott_Prentice_]

Are you able to do an OT build from the command line? Since FM just makes a command line call to the OT, you need to make sure it works there before it'll work in FM. You can see what FM is passing to the OT by looking at the ~ant-build.cmd file (both FM8 DITA and DITA-FMx) ..

C:\Program Files\Adobe\FrameMaker8\fminit\ditafm\~ant-build.cmd
C:\Program Files\Adobe\FrameMaker8\DITA-FMx\~ant-build.cmd

I'm thinking that you may have the wrong version of Ant (based on that last error). I've got version 1.7.0.

...scott

[_Michael_Aimino_]

Got it! I was using Java SDK 1.4.2, got to the part about SDK 5 or better, installed that, wiggled the various settings and it works. Getting CHM and JavaHelp to generate no problem. Now exploring the powers of Ditaval Manager. Thanks!