PDF formatting problems

Report · Oct 19, 2009

Hello - I've been tasked with converting existing documentation (authored in unstructured Frame 9) to structured (DITA) Frame 9. Deliverables will be in pdf format, and they must match the existing manuals.

I modified the topic EDD to map DITA elements to styles in the existing corporate template, then imported the EDD into the template. All is good with that - the DITA topics automatically look like the existing docs. The problem is when I create a ditamap with the topics and save that as a pdf, either straight from the ditamap or saving it as a .book and then as a pdf. I am doing just a small sampling of topics within one chapter, and not a whole book, until I can get all the fundamentals worked out. The goal (at this early point) is to have the pdf look like a chunk of a chapter, with the chapter title at the top, correct running heads, master pages, etc.

There are many problems, but let's start with this one: each topic gets kicked onto its own page in the pdf instead of the chapter flowing together as in a standard manual. I've looked through both the map and book EDDs, modified and imported as I did for the topic EDD/template, but still cannot find anything that's telling it to insert a page break before each heading.

I suspect (and hope) that I am missing something fundamental about maps and/or books. If anyone could enlighten me, my sanity would definitely benefit. I so dread burning up another day on this issue and getting nowhere!

Report · Oct 19, 2009

Hi...

In the FM book that's generated ..are you getting multiple FM files or a single FM file for each "chapter"? It sounds like you're getting multiple files .. that's why the resulting PDF has each topic on a separate page. In order to get the default FM9-DITA process to generate chapter FM files, you need to put each chapter in a separate map. You'd basically have a single root map, and in that map you'd have topicrefs that point to maps that contain all of the topics in each chapter. That *should* format each "chapter" using hierarchical headings. In order to get a proper "chapter title" you'll need to import a new template that formats the top-level heading style in the right way. Because FM9-DITA eliminated the concept of a Book application (in FM8 there were Map, Topic, and Book apps, but FM9 just has Map and Topic) you need to manmually apply the "Book" formatting after generating the book and component files.

An alternate option is to use DITA-FMx which not only continues with the concept of separate Topic (authoring) and Book (publishing) apps, it also provides numerous features for automating the book assembly and publishing cleanup .. as well as lots of nice authoring features ..

http://leximation.com/dita-fmx/beta.php

Cheers,

...scott

Scott Prentice

Leximation, Inc.

www.leximation.com

Report · Oct 19, 2009

Hi Scott - thanks so much for your quick reply. My problem is just a bit more basic than that. Right now, my "book" is just one chapter with five topics in it. It looks find in Framemaker, but the resulting pdf (whether I generate it directly from the ditamap or create a .book file first) is one file with a page break before each topic title. The titles are formatted correctly as far as font, etc., but I can't find where Frame is getting the page break formatting. Not in any of the templates or EDDs that I can see.

I'll move on to adding more chapters to the book/map when I get this first set of topics to work correctly. Sometimes it's these very basis issues that can cause such annoying problems...

Report · Oct 19, 2009

I'll bet that when you make a book file, you're getting 5 FM files in it (going straight from a map does the same thing but doesn't give you the intermediate files which are important to have). If you've just got one chapter, I think you'll still need to create a "submap" to hold those topics, then add the submap to the root map.

You could do a simple test by creating a new map file, then adding your existing map to that map .. then generate the book from the new root map.

Maybe. 😮

...scott

Report · Oct 19, 2009

Ah, I think I understand now. I'll give it a try. Thanks so much!