DITA & empty tags

Report · Aug 08, 2012

I have a dita task with some tags that I don't populate but which are required by the DTD (i.e. the title of a task). In some tasks, I want a title, in others I don't. My issue is: when I save my ditamap to PDF (or anything else) in FM11, it creates an title.1 paragraph element wherever there is an title tag in xml. This obviously is fine where there is a title to display, but when there is no title content I just get a space equivalent to the title.1 paragraph format - the following content is therefore shifted down.

Can I edit the EDD to say something like, if (no content) then ignore?

Either that, or am I using DITA wrong by only wanting a task title on some occasions?

It would help if this was explained with some decent user documentation. As far as I can see, there is little in the way of thorough FM & DITA tutorials.

Thanks

Steve

Report · Aug 08, 2012

Hi Steve...

In DITA, titles are required .. always. This isn't a FrameMaker issue, it's a DITA issue. FrameMaker is just the editor, it didn't create the data model, so there's no reason to expect that they would provide documentation on the data model's best practices. For information on using DITA, you should go to dita.xml.org, or buy one of the many books on using DITA. The concepts presented in those books will apply to all editors, including FrameMaker.

On the other hand, FrameMaker *should* provide better documentation on using the FrameMaker interface and the FrameMaker-specific DITA features. The docs are woefully lacking in those areas .. but we should not expect them to provide basic information about the DITA data model.

Maillists that every DITA/FrameMaker user should subscribe to are (these are all Yahoo groups) ..

- dita-users (for questions about the DITA model, as well as DITA-OT publishing issues)

- framemaker-dita (for FrameMaker/DITA questions)

- dita-fmx-users (only if you're using the DITA-FMx plugin with FrameMaker)

To answer your question .. yes, you can edit the EDD and DTD to make the title element optional. However, that will make your files non-compliant with the DITA specification. I don't recommend doing this, but you wouldn't be the first person to do so. If you do this, you're likely to see problems with publishing and using tools that are expecting to be using "real" DITA .. but it is possible.

Cheers,

...scott

Report · Aug 09, 2012

Thanks for the help, Scott. You guessed right that I'm fairly new to DITA & FM. I don't particularly want to edit DTDs and EDDs, especially not to work around the DITA spec.

As for documentation, I've got plenty on DITA, it's just FM that lacks. Most guides are written for FM8 and it's not always easy to work out what applies to FM10/11 and what doesn't.

Thanks for the group recommendations though.

Steve