~ ~ ~ To Use Or Not To Use...THAT is the ?

What your CD needs is three things:

1) A collection of PDF files, which are your documentation set, possibly created in FrameMaker. I use one PDF file per manual (I generate a single PDF file from the book, and it includes a Table of Contents for the book).

2) A "top level" PDF file which has links into your documentation set, which can also be created in FrameMaker, which acts as a way into your documentation set. I use a separate dedicated PDF file for this, which has links into 50 other manuals (50 other PDF files) on the CD. If you only have one manual (one PDF file) then you probably don't need the top-level PDF file, although you might want to set the open options in your PDF file (in Acrobat, after you have generated the file) to open at the Contents page.

3) An autorun.inf file in the root directory of the CD. In the autorun file you insert the commands for opening the "top level" pdf file or single document file. In the autorun file you can also specify which picture to use to represent the CD when it is listed in a file browser (this picture can be on the CD), and which text to use as a label for the CD when it appears in a file browser (this is only displayed if you specify a blank CD label in your CD burning software when you burn the CD). For example:
[autorun]
open=Start top.pdf
icon=pic.bmp
label=Fancy Product Manuals

You might have to use open=top.pdf instead of open=Start top.pdf.
I'm not sure because I actually use:
open=shexec.exe top.pdf
...which is a reference to a "shexec.exe" file on the CD which is an executable shell that one of our programmers made for me.

This is just one way to do it. The detailed structure will be up to you. And you're right about the relative links.

FrameMaker is not necessarily your only choice, but when it comes to ease of use for working with sets of linked files it would be first choice ... read up on the .book model, where the ToC can deliver hyperlinks in the .pdf page and (when you ask for them) bookmarks in the .pdf bookmark list.

Your workflow sounds very much like something we've been handling successfully with FM for years. I maintain a Certification Document with 28 chapters and references to a couple of hundred external files (plans). Deliverable is a single .pdf of the document itself, plus all the external files in a defined set of directories. Publication is on an intranet server, an extranet server and CD.

Have fun!

[ps] yes, I realise the component count for the document I cited is minimal and insignificant in comparison to what many of you are dealing with :-}