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Is anyone out there using FrameMaker 7.0 to write round-trip XML
documentation? Would you be willing to share your experiences and/or
opinions about this?
I recently started a job as the first, and only, tech writer for a
software startup that provides XML solutions. Being that 1) I get to
design the template from scratch, 2) It's an XML company, so it follows
that it would be nice to deliver documentation in XML (plus the
traditional PDF and possibly HTML), and 3) the new version of FrameMaker
purports to support XML, it seems to be an ideal opportunity to set up an
environment that enables structured XML documentation.
However, after a couple of days of researching the work involved, I'm no
longer sure. My concerns are that 1) it seems to be a tedious task to
adapt the DocBook application that is included with FrameMaker so that
it's a usable template, 2) it seems to be an even more tedious task to
write an XML and/or DocBook application from scratch, 3) Adobe provides
virtually no helpful information on how to go about this task, and neither
does it seem to exist elsewhere, and finally, 4) the few postings I've
seen that talk about using FM+XML, both on this list and elsewhere, seem
to suggest that the XML round-trip conversion is less than ideal.
I have never written structured documentation in FrameMaker, so I'm
willing to concede that the learning curve involved may be part of my
frustration.
Thoughts, anyone?
Jennifer Mueller
Paris, France
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