exporting to XML, can I use a web-published DTD?

[mphare1156]

Now that I have more people working with the XML I'm creating from FM 7.2, I'd like to publish the DTD on a web-site here at work. I'd also like the generated XML to refer to that http'd DTD rather than the local disk DTD as specified in my Struct App.

I'm not sure I know how to get FM to write XML files that refer to a web published DTD. I know what the DOCTYPE statement in the XML file needs to look like. But I don't know how to change the Struct App file to actually write the new DOCTYPE into the XML file.

I've tried putting the URL into the Struct App file, but that doesn't make FM very happy.

Can this be done?

Thanks,

- mike

[MarttiP]

Hi Mike,

The DOCTYPE declaration is written by r/w rules in frame, the doctype declarations in structapps is only used during XML read in frame.

The rule is of format:

writer external dtd is public "-//xxx//DTD your public name//langcode" "dtd_filename";

The system identifier part "dtd filename" can (I think..) point to an URL but you need make sure that Frame's parser has access to it, otherwise you get parser error during XML save.

BR, Martti

[mphare1156]

Well, that explains why I was getting nowhere.. I was looking in the wrong place.

I've tried several variations on the RWRules 'writer' directive.

writer external dtd is public "MyURI" "http://www.myurl.com/XML/NMIS.dtd";

Gives an error that the DTD couldn't be opened and the location of the DTD is a concatenation of the Framemaker document directory and the URL, so something like: D:\mydir\document\r1.1\http:/www.myurl.com/XML/NMIS.dtd

Notice only one forward slash after the 'http'. The resulting XML files has the same problem in the resulting DOCTYPE directive.
Adding more slashed to the writer directive does not put more in the document

I've also tried

writer external dtd is system "http://www.myurl.com/XML/NMIS.dtd";

But I get the same results.

Any idea why the local filepath is being concatenated to the URL?

The DTD accessible, if I edit the XML and put in the second slash, then FM can import the XML and not error on finding the DTD.

There is another problem, but I'll bring that up once this is addressed.

Thanks!

- mike

[_jbwalden_]

Has there been anything further on this? I want to use Fm8 (skilled FM user; new to structure) to output XML for use on the web. Our programmers have created a dtd that resides on our server for parsing the xml code. This thread implies that such a dtd cannot be used or referenced, but that I have to re-create it. Am I reading this wrong?

Also: the dtd as written imports two other files (also on the server) which are entity definitions. When I attempt to bring a local copy of the dtd into an EDD, Frame can't find those files even though they are local too and in the same directory as the dtd...

--Jeff

[_saketanand_]

I am new to this FrameMaker.
I have a big chunk of SGML files and wanted to convert to XML from SGML. Can you guys please give me some idea, How to do the Conversion either using FrameMaker FDK or Some other Tools.
Thanks in advance!!!
Saket

[Russ Ward]

Hi Saket,

Please post this as a separate thread... it will get you better results. You should also consider supplying a bit more information about the SGML. For example, do you have a structured app for importing to FM already? Or, is this some task you have that you just thought FrameMaker might be good for? If you don't have the architecture already set up for import, you might consider a text-based solution for converting the data. You could do it through FM, but it would take lots of overhead that might be avoided by some basic text parsing.

Russ