In a webinar today, Adobe announced and demoed the FrameMaker DITA Application Pack, an extension to FrameMaker that adds full DITA support to FrameMaker 7.2. Adobe did ship a DITA structured application with FrameMaker 7.2, but the application pack adds much more functionality, including a DITA menu, support for maps, relationship tables, conrefs, and ID generation. There will be online help and installation instructions.
Based on what I saw of the demo, this will make it much easier to author DITA-based content in structured FrameMaker. For example, if you add a topic reference to a map and the topic doesn't already exist, FrameMaker will create the topic and assign it a unique ID. If you double-click on a topic in a map, the topic opens for editing. If you create a conref to an element that doesn't have an ID, FrameMaker will generate the ID for you. The Application Pack will be freely available for downloading by FrameMaker 7.2 users. It'll be in open beta in August, with a full release sometime later (no specific date was given). Adobe will also be releasing an S1000D Starter Kit, with will provide similar functionality for the S1000D users. This is exciting news for both FrameMaker users and DITA devotees. It's clear that Adobe is finally devoting more development and marketing resources to FrameMaker. It will also make it easier for writers like myself, who don't have the resources of a documentation group with XML wizards on staff, to adopt structured authoring and DITA. On a related front, they did say that there will be more FrameMaker webinars in the fall. They will make the first three webinars, including today's, available for online viewing sometime soon. Regards Keith
