Monthly Wrap
Each month rotating guest writers offer resources that benefit the technical writing industry. This month Silicon Valley STC Chapter's Anne Mehaffey offers a recap on the October presentation.

FrameMaker 7.0 and XML: What's the Lowdown?
By Anne Mehaffey
Ted Windsor, Principal of FrameHelp, gave both the lowdown and the top-down views of FrameMaker 7.0 with XML at the Berkeley STC Chapter's October meeting. Ted has been working with FrameMaker since its appearance on the desktop publishing scene, and added it to his knowledge base when he found it served him well in his multimedia presentations. An Adobe-Certified Trainer, Windsor was a Senior Trainer with Caxton until forming FrameHelp.

Windsor has enough experience with this field to give us both the party line, "Format your content once, publish it everywhere," and the awful truth, "Yes, there is still only one Undo." In talking about the industry, he also entertained us with the occasional, "That was lame, I don't know why they did that." We are all in the same boat, but he is at the top of the mast.

The Overview: Structure Your Authoring
Adding the XML output capability to the FrameMaker repertoire enables "structured authoring," according to Windsor. Structured authoring with FrameMaker 7 and the XML extensible mark-up language gives you a catalog of elements, a way to view "both the elements and your work concurrently," and output that displays without distortion.

The Movable View: Show it Anywhere
Documents converted to XML are machine-, platform-, and presentation format- independent. If you have a set of information you want to present in many formats, from Web content to PDF, from online help to PDA display, not to mention the age old but not yet forgotten printed matter, Windsor says FrameMaker 7 with its XML portability and scalable vector graphics (SVG) support may be for you.

This is "multi-channel publishing," Windsor says. "Adobe needed to do this. They were stepping back while Quark and Arbortext came in with their solutions."

The Point of View: Start Wherever You Want
To make use of FrameMaker 7.0 with XML, you can choose a chicken- or egg-first option. You can write the document in FrameMaker and import an EDD to apply the structure. An EDD is an enhanced DTD, or document type definition, with added definitions for formatting layout. The EDD applies elements of structure to the document. For the more technically inclined members of the STC audience, Windsor explained, "An EDD is like parsing a DTD with XSL." Or, you can do a "document analysis," create an EDD to reflect your desired result, and then use FrameMaker 7 to add the content. The EDD shows the allowable elements as you write.

Windsor says a good source of information about EDDs comes from Sarah O'Keefe. O'Keefe has two books about FrameMaker.

The Parallel View: See What You Are Doing
For either process option you choose, you can see the Structure View according to Windsor, by opening a second window inside FrameMaker with a right-click on the mouse. Set File Preferences to enable the Structured Authoring function.

Some people use two monitors, one with each view, to get the best perspective. The structure view graphically represents the tagged elements and shows the element catalog in a hierarchy. A click in the hierarchy will show which element is allowable next. Users can apply the element and write. In the structure view hierarchy, round-edge boxes show each element as defined by the EDD.

The Inside View: Apply Rules to Ensure Conformity
Rules group one or more paragraph tags into an element definition. Applying the element applies the rules to the content. In this way, the format for a table, table head, table cell, and table row can all be applied through a single element in the structure. The element holds the content together for multi-channel publishing.

This could certainly ease the woes of formatting for different display types. Windsor explained that most writers who perform structured authoring simply use the EDD instead of paragraph tags: "To add the structure, just modify the body tag."

The Pre-View: See if it Works
You can validate the elements as you write or when you are done. This feature is especially valuable for large documents, such as a maintenance manual for a Boeing 747, which can run over 21,000 pages. The airline industry currently uses FrameMaker 6 with SGML and the ATA 2100 Standard DTD for their documentation. SGML is also supported in FrameMaker 7, for those who want it. However, FrameMaker 7 with XML highlights an element you select in the structure view concurrently with its associated content. Move the element and the associated text moves with it.

Windsor notes that credit card companies use structured authoring to generate form letters with validated customer account data. "Use FrameMaker to format the letter," Windsor says, "then validate the structure to answer the question: Did we pull the right fields?" Adobe's new InDesign offering will produce well-formed XML, however, the validation feature is not included.

The Working View: Single-Source Your Workgroup Authoring
To address single source documentation authoring in a multiple-user group, FrameMaker 7 ships with WebDav compatibility. Although you will need to obtain your own copy of a WebDav server, you can download Apache's version for free.

A WebDav server enables file check-in and check-out for authors on different machines, giving us a facsimile, according to Windsor, of "the poor man's Documentum." Just right for those of us without the IT Department wrapped around our fingers.

Acrobat's View: Tagged PDF Files
FrameMaker 7 has an improved connection to Acrobat Distiller 5; now you can set up job options within FrameMaker to generate PDF files. You can apply the U.S. Government's Section 508 rules for accessible documents to satisfy the requirements for addressing an audience with disabilities.

For example, you can add alternate (flyover) tags for the reading-impaired audience or generate tagged PDF files with a designated logical reading order. Adobe offers an accessibility plug-in for Acrobat 5 that provides the tagging system for the PDF file.

The Expanded View: New Things You Can Do
Additional new features for FrameMaker 7 include master pages with up to 12 running headers and footers. This comment generated applause from the crowd, and slightly offset our disappointment over the single Undo news. Windsor speculated that the lack of iterative Undosmay be rooted in FrameMaker's original construction for use over the UNIX operating system.

The added SVG support for displaying rendered vector graphics without distortion, no matter what the display scale or format, also enables a search capability for call-outs within graphics. You can create SVG graphics in Adobe Illustrator 10 and import them into your FrameMaker 7 file.

The View on Your Machine: Try it Out
Concluding the talk was Windsor's distribution of the Adobe FrameMaker 7.0 Enterprise Solutions CD. This CD has a 30-day tryout version of FrameMaker 7.0 with XML, information about using FrameMaker 7 and Acrobat 5 together, and a guide for using Adobe products to address the needs of the enterprise environment. If you would like a copy of this CD, you can order it from Adobe's Website, or download it, however, be aware that it is a 300MB file.

Thanks for the Views
Windsor reflected, "I don't know why I like this product so much. It's hard to explain, but Word is like using a crayon and FrameMaker a fine ink pen."

The Berkeley STC Chapter thanks Ted Windsor for giving us the benefit of his knowledge, experience, and anecdotal wisdom.

Anne Mehaffey is a contract technical writer who visited Berkeley from the Silicon Valley STC Chapter. She has used FrameMaker for 14 years. When she is not writing, Anne likes to walk on the beach.