XML beginner questions

[garymx]

Hello,

First post on the forums in a long time, and first here altogether. I hope it's okay to jump in.

I have a bit of unstructured FM experience from several years ago and have been using Ventura since (13 years) for my company's books (longish directories--3,000+/volume). I've done some scripts in Ventura so have a little programming experience.

We're looking to switch to XML rather than the tagged text files Ventura can import because of its lack of support, problems possibly due to Win7, and the effort needed to maintain the import files. I've downloaded the FM 11 trial and have been experimenting a little with roundtripping XML and also importing what we already have in XML. So a few I'm sure very basic questions; and thanks in advance:

I've been going through the Adobe tutorials and whatever else I can find online. There don't seem to be any well-reviewed books on Amazon that deal with structured FM 9-11. Some that look promising for XML are about 10 years old--I don't think our needs are cutting edge so should I get something that old, or stick with newer even if there are complaints? Any recommendations? If I can get the hang of it with something that isn't FM specific will it be really hard to adapt that knowledge to FM?

I'm finding EDD, DTD, and Schema to be rather confusing. Would someone explain the difference in simple terms or point me to a video, etc? Assuming I'm starting with an XML file created for another purpose not meant for FM, do I need more than one of these? Do you do one first?

With Ventura if I want to have two discrete pieces of data (off the database) on the same line, say one left aligned and the other right aligned, the programmers put the two together with a tab, and that's controlled by a paragraph tag in Ventura with a right tab. With XML, if I'm understanding it correctly, you wouldn't do that in the XML file--I'm probably not ready to understand the method, just want to know if that's possible without doing something like having the second item's paragraph properties set to have no line break. If so, where would that be specified, EDD, DTD, etc?

Can XML into FM include graphics inline? How about an Excel chart?

Thank you,

Gary

[Gorly · Accepted solution]

Hi Gary,

lots of questions there

But lets start with first things first.

For your general understanding: XML basically separates content from layout. You can add metadata to that content by adding attributes for some semantic purposes or to include information for your layout process (or whatever information you think should be there).

XML consists basically of elements, attributes and entities. Those are defined in a DTD or schema. The EDD does the same for the handling of structured content in FM. For roundtripping FM stuff into XML and vice versa you will need both an EDD for the handling in FM and the DTD or schema for handling XML. Basically both look similar at first, but the EDD will also have some layout information included as well as some routines to ease producing structured content (so called context rules).

The translation between XML and FM also requires some read/write-rules that handle FM specific elements and values to create "correct" XML files.

Your page layout (-> master pages), paragraph and character styles and more predefined styles for tables, graphics and so on, are stored in a template file, that is used when you import a XML file to FM.

Those are the basics you're working with.

Everything layout related will be on the FM side of things (if you use it to publish the stuff).

Everything structure related is primarily done on the DTD and read/write-rules side (but has an equivalent in the EDD).

So, for your further research:

XML books that are 10 years old might not be the best choice, as they will most probably have lots of references to SGML, which doesn't help you much. But some that are about 5 years old will do just fine - not much changed on the XML side (except you decide to use XML schema).

For FM11 it is best to use the guides for FM9 (those are the most complete) and use this forum.

If you covered the basics, I'd suggest to book some consultant for a training on EDD creation. This will help to avoid lots of frustration afterwards and pays off really quick.

He can also provide you with answers for specific questions like the ones you posted above (yes, inline graphics work).

Once your done with this, you should do a research, if one of the already established XML flavors already meet your needs in general (I'm talking of DITA, DocBook, S1000D and the likes) or if you  want to develop your very own structure (which needs some mayor brainstorming, but might fit your needs best).

Cheers Alex

[MarttiP]

Hi Gary,

Framemaker is not a native XML editor and all the "hassle" between XML and Framemaker is caused by that. When an XML document is opened with Framemaker following happens (simplified version..):

1. Framemaker invokes external parser that validates the XML document against DTD or Schema. If no show stopper errors, game goes on..

2. After succesful validation, Frame reads the XML document through it's read/write rules. These rules tell Frame how to convert certain XML-elements to corresponding Framemaker document objects (table, graphics, xref etc..) + some additional stull like drop/rename elements/attributes etc.

3. Frame picks up an structured FM template (based on definitions in structapps.fm)  and "pours" the XML into it and result is a structured FM document. The template contains EDD definitions. EDD is Framemaker's internal representation of a DTD or Schema (DTD and schema are basically the same thing, DTD has evolved from SGML and schema is the modern version specifically designed for XML. Applications use either schema or dtd, not both).

4. Writing XML out happens roughly in opposite order, first Frame created temporary xml document from structured fm document through r/w rules and the invokes the external parser that validates it and if everything is ok, writes the final xml document out.

In order to succesfully read and write XML with framemaker you need to build r/w rules,  derive the EDD from dtd or schema and modify it, if necessary. Then you need do develop the FM template ja import the EDD into it. And finally make your application to structapps.fm file.

BR, Martti

[garymx]

Thank you both, I appreciate the detailed replies. Lots to learn.

Gary

[garymx]

(I tried to mark both as correct seeing as how that's worth more points, but was only able to change one from "Helpful".)