Can an EDD be devolped for an entire .FM book?

Report · Sep 18, 2009

Can and should an EDD be developed for an entire FrameMaker book or should a seperate EDD be developed for the different sections within a book? A title, chapter, glossary, appendicies, and index all may requre different formatting elements so, in my mind, it would be a very involved and confusing process to create one single EDD for an entire book, though my thinking could be due to the fact that I am a neophyte to Structured FrameMaker.

All insights are welcome.

Thanks

Report · Sep 18, 2009

Adam,

I think it is best to have one EDD. You will likely find that you will want to use several structures, such as paragraphs, lists, tables, figures, etc, the same way in different kinds of documents, such as chapters and appendices. Furthermore, you cannot import multiple EDDs into one template, so you will would have to have a separate template for each EDD. If you want to maintain the same look across all the templates, then having multiple templates makes it more difficult to manage. At our company, we create several different KINDS of manuals and documents, all using only ONE EDD and two templates, one template for each paper size (the master pages are different for the different paper sizes). In my opinion, the single EDD is the way to go.

Good luck,

Van

Report · Sep 18, 2009

Adam,

I agree with Van. Two additional comments:

- If your EDD becomes unwieldy when you get everything you need in there, then you probably need too much. In other words, it's likely (although not certain) that the complexities of your layout are becoming more of a burden than an advantage.

- Larger EDDs can require more overhead, but once they are set up, they are automatic and everything works on its own. On the other hand, unless you do some programming, trying to manage different EDDs within a book is a manual process and quite error-prone. I'm sure that somewhere along the way there will be a mistake, perhaps with significant consequences.

Good luck,

Russ

Report · Sep 18, 2009

Thanks for the insights, you've both provided me with some direction.

Report · Sep 18, 2009

Adam,

One additional point...you may or may not want to use this...

My EDD is large and very complicated. For reasons too numerous to explain, I found that I have a lot of repetitive content, such as general rules and formatting rules. I created little snippets of this repetitive content, each in a separate file. Then I imported them as text insets into the places where I needed them. This reduced some of the management overhead because I could make changes in one place, as opposed to several places within the EDD. Remember that the EDD is a structured file that operates the same way as other structured files. ITS EDD, however, unavailable to you.

The above suggestion is something you should NOT do until you have become VERY comfortable creating and editing EDDs. I would say it is a second or third order refinement to EDD creation.

Good luck. Creating an EDD is a fun and very rewarding project.

Van

Report · Sep 23, 2009

Adam,

I agree with most of the responses you have already received, but would like to make a few additional observations:

FrameMaker does allow a book to use different element definitions than its various component files, which themselves do not all need to use the same set of element definitions. There are situations in which different element definitions, usually defined in different EDDs, are useful. Situations that require such use, however, are infrequent.
If you anticipate ever saving an entire book as XML, the export will be based on one set of definitions.
If you plan on generating lists such as a table of contents, the elements you will use to set up the generated file will be those defined in the book file, but the elements that can be extracted from the book components will be those that occur in those components—the elements defined in the book and in the documents need to match at least to that extend.
Remember you can divide your EDD into sections. For example, you might want one section for common elements that appear in many different types of book components, one for each type of book component, and one for elements that appear only in books. You can develop and test your EDD one section at a time.

--Lynne

Report · Sep 24, 2009

Lynne,

Thank you for the input. Do you know of any good resources that show how to create different sections within an EDD, or could you yourself explain to me how to do this?

Thanks again,

Adam

Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:20:40 -0600
From: forums@adobe.com
To: adam_p_jasper@hotmail.com
Subject: Can an EDD be devolped for an entire .FM book?
Adam,
I agree with most of the responses you have already received, but would like to make a few additional observations:
1. FrameMaker does allow a book to use different element definitions than its various component files, which themselves do not all need to use the same set of element definitions. There are situations in which different element definitions, usually defined in different EDDs, are useful. Situations that require such use, however, are infrequent.
2. If you anticipate ever saving an entire book as XML, the export will be based on one set of definitions.
3. If you plan on generating lists such as a table of contents, the elements you will use to set up the generated file will be those defined in the book file, but the elements that can be extracted from the book components will be those that occur in those components—the elements defined in the book and in the documents need to match at least to that extend.
4. Remember you can divide your EDD into sections. For example, you might want one section for common elements that appear in many different types of book components, one for each type of book component, and one for elements that appear only in books. You can develop and test your EDD one section at a time.
--Lynne

>

Report · Sep 24, 2009

Adam,

The sections that Lynne is talking about are for organizing your EDD. When you create an EDD from scratch, one of the elements you can insert is a Section element, which has a title that you can give it. The section element can contain paragraph elements, which allow you to insert explanatory text. You can then insert the element definitions you want in that section. Then start a new section and create its definitions. It makes NO difference to operation of the EDD whether you create sections or not; it is there for you to organize your EDD. The user does not see the sections, nor any paragraphs and comments you may add to the EDD. From the user's point of view, the EDD/template works the same way no matter how the EDD is organized internally. So, there are probably no resources on how to create sections, because they are for organization, not the operation of the EDD.

Van