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Framemaker Has Two Ways of Approaching Documents: and Unstructured

FrameMaker 10 displays element descriptions next to element names in the element catalog. This simplifies structured authoring. Authors can edit the element descriptions in the EDD to provide contextual help for elements. This reduces training costs and effort by explaining elements without extensive training. The process exports the template structure as an EDD, edits the EDD to add DescriptiveTag elements with descriptions, and imports the updated definitions back into the template.

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202 views3 pages

Framemaker Has Two Ways of Approaching Documents: and Unstructured

FrameMaker 10 displays element descriptions next to element names in the element catalog. This simplifies structured authoring. Authors can edit the element descriptions in the EDD to provide contextual help for elements. This reduces training costs and effort by explaining elements without extensive training. The process exports the template structure as an EDD, edits the EDD to add DescriptiveTag elements with descriptions, and imports the updated definitions back into the template.

Uploaded by

nicoletabuzatu
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Adobe FrameMaker is a document processor designed for writing and editing large or complex documents, including structured documents.

FrameMaker has two ways of approaching documents: structured and unstructured.

Structured FrameMaker is used to achieve consistency in documentation within industries such as aerospace, where several models of the same complex product exist, or pharmaceuticals, where translation and standardization are important requirements in communications about products. Structured FrameMaker uses SGML and XML concepts. The author works with an EDD (Element Definition Document), which is a FrameMakerspecific DTD (Document Type Definition). The EDD defines the structure of a document where meaningful units are designated as elements nested in each other depending on their relationships, and where the formatting of these elements is based on their contexts. Attributes or Metadata can be added to these elements and used for single source publishing or for filtering elements during the output processes (such as publishing for print or for web-based display). The author can view the conditions and contexts in a tree-like structure derived from the grammar (as specified by the DTD) or as formatted in a typical final output form. Unstructured FrameMaker uses tagged paragraphs without any imposed logical structure, except that expressed by the authors concept, topic organization, and the formatting supplied by paragraph tags.

There were several major competitors in the technical publishing market, such as Arbortext, Interleaf, and Corel Ventura. Many academic users now use LaTeX, because modern editors have made that system increasingly user-friendly, and LyX allows LaTeX to be generated with little or no knowledge of LaTeX. Another alternative is Scribus, a desktop publishing (DTP) application that is released under the GNU General Public License. Several formats, including DocBook XML, target authors of technical documents about computer hardware and software. Lastly, alternatives to FrameMaker for technical writing include Help authoring tools and XML editors.

FrameMaker 10: Using Element Descriptions to cut down writers training costs and efforts
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Prolog
The guided-tour like authoring experience of FrameMaker just got even better. In addition to the structured view, element catalog, and view elements as tags, FrameMaker 10 displays element descriptions next to the element names in the element catalog. This article introduces Element Descriptions and illustrates how you can port additional text/help that appears next to the elements in FrameMaker for writers, resulting in savings in the cost and effort involved in training new writers.

Element Descriptions

FrameMaker 10 further simplifies structured authoring by displaying description of the various elements next to the elements.

You can edit the element descriptions to provide contextual, element-level help to your authors. A good, thorough implementation of these descriptions can save you time, effort, and money and will be especially useful for the new authors in the team. You can do this with a fraction of the cost and effort of having to train new writers about the vocabulary (i.e. elements) of your structured applications.

The process to insert/edit element descriptions


Using the DITA 1.2 task template as example, the following steps illustrate how you can augment the textual descriptions of your templates to simplify the task of using structure even further.

Step 1: Export the element definitions of your template as an EDD.


1. Open the relevant structured template .fm file and select StrutureTools > Export Element Catalog as EDD. (See structapps.fm for the name and location of the template file.)

FrameMaker creates a new document as an EDD that includes the structure and the elements of the template. 2. Save this document.

Step 2: Add/Edit the Descriptive Text element in the EDD.


1. In the EDD, locate the element tag in the EDD that you want to edit.

2. After the Container tag in the relevant element tag, insert the DescriptiveTag element and type in a description relevant to the element. If the DescriptiveTag element is already present, you can edit the description.

Step 3: Import element definitions to the template from the EDD.

In the structured template, select File > Import > Element Definitions.

The element descriptions you typed into the EDD are now in template. Now when you create a new document based on the updated template, you see the element descriptions next to the elements in the Element Catalog. The figure below displays the edited descriptions of the elements prolog, relatedlinks, shortdesc, task, and taskbody.

Over time, edit the descriptions recursively to address the doubts and frequently asked questions of your writers for various elements.

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