Adding structure--where are my images going?

[clavius]

Hi folks--

I'm converting legacy content to XML. I am applying a conversion table to add structure, then using Save As XML to create DITA files. The structuring part is working fine--in the structure browser I can see what I expect to see there. However, when I "Save As XML" using any of the standard DITA applications, my <image> elements disappear. Everything else looks great, it's just the missing <image> elements that are giving me a headache.

The images are visible in the structured document (they are referenced to external TIF files), and I can see in the structured viewer that the <image> elements are there. If I save the document as XML with no structured application, I get the image elements (but of course not with the attributes that DITA wants).

Does anyone have any advice about how to make the DITA application pass the <image> elements through to the XML output, or what I might be doing wrong in the conversion table? I've tried a variety of approaches, including with and without (Promote), with and without a wrapper <fig> element, and so on. (When I include the <fig> wrappers, which are based on the presence of <image>, they do appear, so the translation does see the <image> elements at some point, but it doesn't serialize them.)

--Clay

[ScottPrentice]

Hi Clay...

It may be your read/write rules .. but could be other things. Try installing the trial of my FM2DITA plugin ..

     http://leximation.com/tools/info/fm2dita.php

You can use it for free for 30 days, and you can take a look at the FM2DITA structure application and compare it with yours to possibly see what's going on.

There's also a webinar I did for Adobe that might help, as well as the sample files used ..

     http://leximation.com/downloads/adobe-fm2xml-2013/‌

Cheers,

Scott Prentice

Leximation, Inc.

www.leximation.com

[clavius]

Hi Scott--

Thanks. I looked at the code in your webinar download, but I didn't notice any significant differences there.

I was, however, able to figure out the source of the problem. I was assuming that selecting Set Application->DITA 1.2 Topic was all I needed to do to tell FM that I wanted the newly-structured content to be treated as DITA. But I discovered that there's an additional step needed, to import the element definitions from the EDD. (It seems to me that that should be implicit in "Set Application", but apparently not.)

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

--Clay

[ScottPrentice]

Good catch.

Yes .. the "Set Application" does not change the underlying EDD. Best to use that only for "viewing" the currently assigned structure application .. actually setting it is a bit misleading.

Cheers,

...scott