FM8 + DITA Plugin + DITA-OT --> PDF (without reverting to FM binaries)?

[R__VanDyke]

Hi:

Here comes a Big Question: I want to produce a reasonably high-quality PDF without using FrameMaker 8's DITA > Build FM DITABook... or Build FM document... tools to "revert" my DITA XML-based topics to FrameMaker binaries.

By "high quality PDF, I mean something that resembles the book-like PDF output -- including such niceties as front matter files (Prefaces, legal boilerplate), TOC, Index -- historically produced by FrameMaker.

What I've done so far

In pursuit of this goal I've:

• 
  
• Successfully "connected" the FM8 plug-in and FM8 DITA to the DITA-OT (1.3.1), then used the plug-in's demo to verify that basic functionality is working
• 
  
  
• Successfully used the plug-in to generate very simple HTML output from my own FrameMaker DITAMAP file that lists three DITA topics files I've created (one each concept, task, and reference topic)
• 
  
  
• Searched both this forum, two DITA related Yahoo forums, and Google groups looking for a coherent answer
• 
  
  

What I don't yet know how to do

Having completed the basics, I'm now hoping to avoid lengthy experimentation and proceed more or less directly to:

• 
  
• Constructing the proper sort of DITAMAP file
• 
  
• Configuring the FM plug-in to generate PDF output
• 
  
• Configuring the DITA-OT to format the PDF pages
• 
  

I suspect this is a lot to ask for, but looking for existing information is my first step towards solving the problem...

Cheers & thanks,
Riley

[_Scott_Prentice_]

Hi Riley...

Really .. why would you want to do this when you've got all of the PDF power in FM? :)

b - Constructing the proper sort of DITAMAP file:

FM only supports DITA 1.0 at this point .. DITA 1.1 is where the new cool "bookmap" book-specific elements were added. You could use DITA 1.1 to build your bookmap file (outside of FM) .. or you could set up your Map application to support DITA 1.1 (this can be done, with a little work). However, in general, you don't necessarily need the elements provided by bookmap to build a PDF book using the OT. The issue of getting the ditamap set up properly (to use bookmap and DITA 1.1) is, however, not the biggest problem that you'll run into. For now, I'd just use a simple map that you're able to make in FM now, and move on to your other bullet points.

b - Configuring the FM plug-in to generate PDF output

You first need to configure the OT to generate PDF output. This is actually fairly simple. You basically just need to install an FO processor (Apache FOP is free, there are others available as well that cost $$). You should be able to follow the instructions in the OT to get this working, but if you run into trouble your best source for help is the dita-users Yahoo list. The key being that you must get it working from the command line before trying to hook up FM to the OT. Once it is working from the command line, you'll just need to add PDF as a target for the FM OT plugin. In the ditafm.ini file ..

FrameMaker8\fminit\ditafm\ditafm.ini

add "pdf" as a target in the BuildFile section .. it will look something like this ..

[BuildFile]
AntCommand=ant
AntScript=ditafm-ant.xml
Count=3
DitaDir=C:\Tools\DITA\DITA-OT1.3.1
1=chm
2=html
3=pdf

Then in the ditafm-ant.xml file, add the "pdf" target just below the "chm" target ..

<target name="pdf" description="build the pdf output" depends="init.project">
<mkdir dir="${project.output.dir}${file.separator}pdf"/>
<antcall target="dita2pdf">
<param name="args.input" value="${project.dir}${file.separator}${project.ditamap}"/>
<param name="output.dir" value="${project.output.dir}${file.separator}pdf"/>
</antcall>
</target>

This *should* allow you to build a PDF from FM.

b - Configuring the DITA-OT to format the PDF pages

This is the hardest part (and hopefully the part that will convince you that it's much better to build your PDFs from FM directly). Basically, you either need to learn XSL-FO development, or pay someone lots of money to do the XSL-FO development for you. There are some minor tweaks that you can do fairly easily, but to get anything that you'll consider a serious "book" will take some serious effort and/or expense. To get answers to specific questions on this, you'll need to post to the dita-users Yahoo list.

Cheers!

...scott

[R__VanDyke]

Scott:

Thanks much(!) for the detailed answer.

I agree that for now the XSL-FO "plumbing" is probably be a bit more than I can take on at the same time that I'm converting FrameMaker-based (dare I say FrameMaker-imprisoned?) content into DITA compliant XML. So for the time being I'll probably fall back to FrameMaker (albeit grudgingly) to generate the content as PDF.

But longer term, I want very much to eliminate the need to use any proprietary tool to downgrade nicely structured XML (that is to say text-based) topics into a proprietary binary file format simply so I can deliver a coherent package of those topics in a PDF...

Stated another way, my long-term goal is a completely open-source, standards-based workflow end-to-end...

Cheers & thanks again,
Riley

[_Scott_Prentice_]

Hi Riley...

Do keep in mind that there's no way to duplicate the quality of PDF you get from FM with XSL-FO. It simply doesn't support the same level of formatting and layout control that you get with FM. For fairly simple documents, you can get reasonably nice looking PDFs with FO, but if you've got very high quality standards or complex documents, you'll be at a loss with FO.

Although a completely open-source workflow is a nice goal, I feel like the most important part to keep open is the content format. If your content is in DITA, then you're free to use whatever editor and publishing tool that provides the features you need (and to change those tools when something else looks better). If one or both of those are open source .. so much the better.

One of my goals for DITA-FMx is to set it up so the map to book process can be driven programmatically so it can be used in an automated workflow .. I'm hoping that this will be largely functional in the upcoming update.

BTW .. don't forget about the SVDIG meetings in Sunnyvale. You could chat with other DITA users to learn how they are handling these issues.

http://svdig.ditamap.com/

Cheers!

...scott