FrameMaker and S1000D

[Guest]

I'm currently using FM 9 and a iSpec2200 plug-in (I'm not a developer....just a tech-writer) to author aircraft Component Maintenance Manuals (CMMs).  The plugin is very protective about customizing, so much so I'm pretty much stuck with using it for just authoring CMMs.  I have a need to author other types of documents and from what I've read about S1000D, I think an S1000D plug-in just might be the ticket.  I did query the Adobe forums for S1000D and got very few hits that involved FM.  None that were in 2010.  This is concerning to me.  Should I be concerned...what's the scoop on FM and S1000D?

[Ian Proudfoot]

Hello gtgeric,

It's a good thing for an ATA CMM plugin to limit customization, that's the way that ATA puplications are meant to be. The ATA systems I have created in the past only allowed for some freedom to customize the CMM's title page and add a company logo to the page headers.

On to S1000D. You should be able to find several S1000D discussions over the past two or three years.

I have developed two FrameMaker S1000D application packs for Adobe in the past, and despite the relative lack of messages on the forum I still get a constant, low level of help requests and development projects. If you were to purchase one of the commercial FrameMaker S1000D application packs you would also receive support direct from its supplier rather than through the User to User forum.

Don't worry about S1000D and FrameMaker, all is well.

Regards

Ian

[Guest]

Thank you Ian for your response.

As far as the customization I agree with you on authoring ATA documents, but I need to also author non-ATA documents and wanted to utilize the iSpec2200 plugin to also author those documents as well.  Not going to happen and I get it.

Concerning S1000D, I'm just trying to get a feel for it's popularity.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but S1000D has a mucher wider industry scope (appears to be unlimited) types than iSpec2200 does (strictly aviation), so I'm thinking if it's such the "bomb" that it should be, then why isn't there more chatter about it in the techinal writing community?  I'm a bit perplexed there has been no chatter this year, and only three threads all of last year.  My thinking is it's very slow to catch on and it will be more than 2 or 3 years before it becomes more predominate than iSpec2200 in the aviation community.  Not a very scientific way of making a determination, but the company can't send me to trade shows or the like to get more concrete data.  I need to make a recommendation on whether or not to start authoring using S1000D, so this forum is one way to collect data.

Regards,

Eric G.

[Ian Proudfoot · Accepted solution]

Eric,

S1000D is normally a contractual requirement, so most projects use it because they have to. Here in the UK it is the only way that technical documentation is delivered for Ministry of Defence projects. The use of S1000D for civil aviation projects has still to catch on because it is replacing the existing ATA iSpec2200 for new products, while existing products continue as they were. Many current ATA projects will never move to S1000D.

So is S1000D popular? The answer has to be yes, but not in the same way that DITA is popular. DITA seems to be driven from the author upwards while the requirement for S1000D normally comes from the top down. As you mention S1000D's scope is almost without limit. So it can replace the ATA CMM or AMM. In fact I have delivered systems that do just that. You get the benefits of S1000D plus the look and feel of an ATA manual.

Also don't forget that with S1000D it's not just the authoring tool that is important, you really need a Common Source Database as well...

Ian

[Guest]

Your explanation was to the point and makes a lot of sense.  Thank you a TON!  Your explanation did spur an additional question:  What's the difference between DITA and S1000D and which direction would best suite my tech-pubs requirement?  I assume some readers of this post would have the same question.  I found a super article at: http://www.dclab.com/S1000D_DITA.asp explaining the differences.

To piggy back on your explanation, I think I can narrow down our requirement to S1000D.  iSpec2200 is owned by ATA.  ATA is now a member of S1000D, so it stands to reason aviation documents will eventually fall in S1000D.  We've already had one customer request their documents in S1000D.  Thankfully they agreed to accept iSpec2200.  Anyhow, thank you for the info...it really helped solidify my position.  We just started authoring in iSpec2200 using FM9.  None of our documents are in a Content Management System (CMS) yet...we have a CMS...but it's not set-up yet to take in FM docs. I may contact you for formal consultation.  Thank you again.

Eric G.

[Paula_Rad]

This is actually the same advice I have heard. Use S1000D when that is the requirement of the contract. At least that's what they say here.

Cheers

Paula

[C_Sarelius]

G'day Eric,

this is a bit late seeing you posted the article in Apr but for what it's worth, my expereince with S1000D has been in the land environment, trying to develop documentation using S1000D Descriptive DTD for armoured vehicles. Our development was going well until the PM pulled the plug and money, mainly because he didn't understand what we were doing or the benefits of it. Here in Australia it is slow in the pick up but some of our commercial airlines are getting more into it and Defence is slowly coming around, mainly because the eqpt suppliers are giving data as data modules eg. Eurocopter (?) for our attack helos. I note your comment though about the CMS: the system I had used FM as our editing tool but we stored data as SGML in our CSDB. When we checked out the DM from the CSDB, it would open FM and then prompt us for the application we wanted to use, and then we starrted editing. Storing it as SGML meant we could output the data in whatever format we wanted, HTML or PDF (this was a few years ago). The strength of S1000D is that it provides the rules for the structure of data modules to come together to make a manual, either hard copy or electronic. As the cover of the spec says 'S1000D International Specification for Interactive Electronic Tchnical Manuals utilising a Common Source Database'. We took the S1000D DTD and created our EDD; to the EDD we applied our formatting rules.

Anyway, that was my 'two bobs worth'! I assume you've checked out www.s1000d.org

All the best

Carl Sarelius