components for structure: checking my assumptions

[FieryPantone]

Starting from the FM 8 version of the Structure Application Developer Guide, I've worked through Chapter 2, "Create a new structure template" with general success, and three questions so far:

- am I right in feeling that the "template" file defines things like page size, single/double sided, paragraph formats, colours and so on while the EDD defines the structure and can define the rules used to apply the paragraph formats?

- am I right in feeling that the structured document is directly aware of the EDD (otherwise File > Import > Element definitions wouldn't pick up changes in the EDD)

- with a structured document open, how do I find out which template and EDD it's using?

[Russ Ward]

Hi Niels,

Your assumptions are correct and my congrats to you for figuring it out. The template is the same thing you've always used in unstructured Frame. The EDD is like another layer that adds the ability to structure your text and apply formatting to your document in a more controlled, automated fashion. Like you say, one of the ways it can do this is by picking paragraph formats for you, taking the place of your use of the paragraph catalog. Or, it can also apply "ad-hoc" formatting directly, the same as if you applied format overrides with the designers yourself. The difference with the EDD doing it, though, is that it is consistent and "permanent" as long as the EDD lives in the respective file. In fact, it's a source of rich debate whether EDDs should be designed to call paragraph formats only, perform ad-hoc formatting only, or a combination of each. I don't think there is any concrete answer... probably just depends on the end use.

Frame is reasonably vigilent about reading EDD rules and applying them when you perform editing actions. You can slip in manual format overrides here and there, but you can't rely on them staying where you put them.

For your last question, the simple answer is that you really can't, unless you jimmy something into the EDD yourself. Like a template, you never really know which version or file was imported into another file. You can, however, add things like text comments to an EDD. If you were very judicious about editing a comment which indicated a version, you could export the EDD from any file (StructureTools > Export Element Catalog As EDD) to read that comment and see what EDD you last imported.

Russ

[_Van_Kurtz_]

Niels,

To add to Russ's remarks:

I advise keeping a clean, blank document that you update with new colors, formats, etc, as well as any changes to your EDD. If another writer or a contract writer works on your documents and adds overrides, you can always reimport the formats and element definitions from your clean template and specify that overrides are to be removed.

I belong to the school that formatting should be done mostly, if not completely, by the EDD. This keeps others from changing the formats in the template, which are not overrides. Of course, an reimport of the formats from the clean document would remove any such changes. Note that there are some paragraph styles that one cannot control by the EDD, such as TOC and index entry styles, because the latter are typically not structured.

To record EDD revision level and date, I have a few attributes in my root element that are read only. One can see them easily in the structure view without having to export the element definitions; however, the latter is a quick and easy thing to do also.

Because there is no way to date changes to formats, master pages, etc., you might want to update the EDD's revision date for every change you make, even if you do not make changes to the EDD itself.

Creating an EDD is a fun and stimulating project to do. Good luck,
Van

[Lynne A. Price]

Niels,

There is no way to tell what template underlies a document. After all, a template is simple a FrameMaker document from which other documents are created. There's no particular definition of what changes must be made to a derived document before it has diverged enough to no longer "use" a particular template. Nevertheless, many organizations put information such as a template revision number or date on a reference page under the assumption that users will not change them arbitrarily.

You have more luck with an EDD. Use the Structure Tools > Export Element Catalog as EDD command to create a new EDD that has the element definitions extracted from your structured document. The result is probably not identical to the original EDD. The element definitions appear in alphabetical order, any sections are unwrapped, and any Paras between element definitions are removed. However, you can extract one EDD from the document you want to inspect and one from your template. You can then do a doc compare on the two extracted EDDs to determine any functional differences.

The suggestions to identify the EDD's version in comments or attributes are good. If you use attributes, you can make them hidden as well as read-only if you don't want to bother users with them.

I tend to put the version identification into Para elements at the start of the EDD and into the tag of an empty format change list. I use the format change list rather than an element tag or attribute name because format change list tags (like element tags but unlike attribute names) can contain spaces and punctuation characters and (unlike element tags but like names of hidden attributes) they are invisible to the user. I include one of the modification date variables in the tag so that whether or not I bump the version number the date the EDD was last edited is automatically incorporated into the element definitions. For example, I include a Para such as, "The following format change list is used to identify the version of element definitions from this EDD that has been imported into a FrameMaker document" followed by a definition such as:

Format change list: XYZ EDD Version 3.14 of May 8, 2008

where "3.14" is entered through a user variable and "May 8, 2008" is a modification date variable. Note that the entire string "XYZ EDD Version 3.14 of May 8, 2008" is the format change list tag. There is no need to define any properties.

--Lynne

[FieryPantone]

Thanks for the encouragement and the ideas about tracking the link; Lynne, as soon as I read what you said about the impossibility of knowing what unstructured template you started from the penny dropped...

Now to keep new tasks at bay for long enough to get my teeth into structure seriously!

N