I think the answer to your question is somewhere between No and It
Depends, but closer to No. It gets back to the structure vs. display
issue. FrameMaker tries to give you both the XML world and the WYSIWYG
world in one package. A more typical XML editor (like the new XML view
in Frame 11) is just a text-based markup language editor that doesn't
know anything about display. The XML output from such an editor gets
turned into a formatted document by other software that transforms it
(XSL and that stuff) based on the elements and attributes. This is how
XML can get used in lots of different ways (single-sourcing). Different
transformations yield different formatting based on the target display
platform.
If FrameMaker, that display transformation takes place in real time in
the interaction between the EDD and the para and char formats in your
document based on the elements and attributes in your structure plus
specific formatting overrides in the EDD. This means there is a
temptation to build in a lot of attributes and formatting that is Frame
specific. For example, some of my elements include whether or not I want
the para or heading to be at the top of a page. This is entirely display
related and something that would almost certainly be frowned upon if you
were writing for multiple display environments.
Therefore, if you are round tripping for distribution in other display
environments, I would actually suspect that you would want to minimize
the format related stuff in your structure, rather than maximize it
because the framemaker-specific formatting would make less sense when
transforming to other display environments. If you are round tripping
just for editing purposes and it always comes back to FrameMaker for
printing/PDF, then that is less of an issue and you can do what works
best for you. Even in that case, you might not want to burden the
authors with format related attributes to think about.
Hope I've been at least somewhat coherent in my comments. I've probably
simplified things a little. I don't do any round tripping, so I can't
speak much to the pitfalls.
Fred
On 9/13/2012 6:29 PM, rebecca officer wrote:
Hi guys
If you're planning to roundtrip through XML, with different authors
using different XML editors, you'd need to have all the formatting in
the EDD, right?
Or am I on completely the wrong track in my ignorance?
Thanks
Rebecca
--
Fred Wersan
VT MÄK, Principal Technical Writer
68 Moulton Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
T: +1.617.876.8085 x124 Email: [email protected]
Get Realistic Background Traffic - up to 75% off!
www.mak.com/YourPatternOfLife | Offer ends September 25, 2012
_______________________________________________
You are currently subscribed to framers as [email protected].
Send list messages to [email protected].
To unsubscribe send a blank email to
[email protected]
or visit
http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com
Send administrative questions to [email protected]. Visit
http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
