Re: questions re Structured FM7.2 to FM11

Matt Sullivan Fri, 25 Oct 2013 10:57:43 -0700

Tino's instructions are wonderful, but I wanted to clarify one portion…

In your structapps.fm, you define the file paths for all necessary files. All files except the DTD itself are genuine FrameMaker files.
First, you should make sure that the structapps.fm is of the newest version. Create a new structapps.fm with FM 11 and copy (only) the application entries of the old FM 7.2-file into it (via the structure-view window), without the header.

In the Structure menu, you will find Edit Application Definitions and Edit Global Application Definitions. While both will open a copy of structapps.fm, you may find the first one (the non-global) to be easier to work with, as it is intended for your "custom" applications, and doesn't include the various DITA, DocBook, etc. applications provided by default. This will simplify Tino's paragraph referenced above.

Also, Structure Tools > Structured Application Designer will provide you with a dialog which helps you define the files used (and referenced by Tino) in the application.

One last "interesting" piece of trivia: Each time you modify the structapps.fm, be sure to save your changes, and to use the Structure Tools > Read Application Definitions command. If you forget (and even the best of us occasionally do…) then you will not see the effects of your changes until you restart Fm11.

HTH!!!

-Matt

Matt R. Sullivan
co-author Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11
P: 714.798.7596 | C: 714.585.2335 | [email protected]

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On Oct 24, 2013, at 12:50 PM, Heiko Haida <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Cheryl,
as Matt and Scott have already mentioned, there are differences, but you should be able to work with your old files and get some result, at least.
FrameMaker works with Unicode characters since FM 8. Some older settings for characters - iso characters in the r/w rules, prefix/suffix entries (EDD) or numbering formats/reference definitions (in the templates) - may have to be updated or modified. You have to be aware of that if you convert FM 7.2-files.
FM 11 now supports XSLT 2. Of course, XSLT 1-templates should still work.
As you know, the structured environment consists mainly of the following parts/files:
structured application definition file = structapps.fm
read/write-rules file
DTD and entity definitions
EDD
Template(s) with imported EDD
In your structapps.fm, you define the file paths for all necessary files. All files except the DTD itself are genuine FrameMaker files.
First, you should make sure that the structapps.fm is of the newest version. Create a new structapps.fm with FM 11 and copy (only) the application entries of the old FM 7.2-file into it (via the structure-view window), without the header.
All other files should at least be opened and saved with FM 11.
If you can get some How-to-instructions for FM 8 or FM 9, these will also be helpful for FM 11.
Manuals are available from the Adobe Website. Look for "FM structure application developer guide" and "reference". We just had a discussion on "frameusers" about this and it seems, that in fact the newest versions of these manuals were released with FM 9 (which is pretty long time ago...).
The FM 11 online help is here:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/framemaker/using/WSd817046a44e105e21e63e3d11ab7f73d53-8000.html
You can get infos on some commercial sites for free too, eg. here: http://wiki.scriptorium.com./tiki-index.php
Good luck -
Tino H. Haida, Berlin

[email protected]:

Background: My company recently purchased FM11 and after using FM7.2 forever, I'm now learning my way around FM11 one-day-at-a-time. I had created structured FM7.2 files and was working on round-tripping them to-XML-and-back several years ago, when we were "overtaken by events" and I never did get the XSLT stylesheets worked out.

Present: In opening my old FM7.2 structured files, I'm finding all the work I did on creating EDDs and other special files for XML pretty much obsolete or so it seems. (The structure dev guide was a huge help back then...) Is there a magic bullet or two that I can use to be able to re-use the 34-page EDD (lots of thought and work put into that way-back-when), or should I just start over from scratch and let FM11 do the heavy lifting that the marketing blurbs on it says it will do?

Any pitfalls I should be aware of? Advice? Books I should get? Is there a FM11 structure dev guide available? Any help or suggestions are welcome!

Thanks!
Cheryl Dwyer
Lead Tech Writer
Industrial Medium Software, Inc.
McLean, VA

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Re: questions re Structured FM7.2 to FM11

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