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Subject: DOCBOOK-APPS: FrameMaker 7.0


For those who were interested in using FrameMaker with
DocBook XML, it looks like FrameMaker 7.0 will do that.
I just received my copy of FrameMaker 7.0, which
combines the standard FrameMaker and FrameMaker+SGML
into a single product that also does XML.  It comes with
a DocBook XML 4.1.2 application, which means an EDD (Frame's
version of a DTD), read/write rules for moving between
XML and Frame's .fm file format, and a set of paragraph
and inline formats.

I was able to do File->Open on DocBook 4.1.2 XML documents,
if they had the correct DocBook PUBLIC identifier in the
DOCTYPE.  The document becomes a Frame structured .fm
file, which means you are working in a WYSIWYG formatted view.
You can turn on the tag boundaries for editing elements,
but be sure to turn them off before saving as PDF because
they show up there.  The only problem I've seen so far is
that literallayout line breaks aren't always preserved.

When you open a <book> document, Frame creates a standard
Frame book file and divides the chapters into individual
Frame documents.  

I think the formatting styles in the app need
some work, but Adobe says that the app they provide is just
a starting point for the user to improve upon.
I can't comment on its behavior as an XML editor yet.
I see a couple of oddities when I round-trip XML files
through it, but that may just need some tweaking of
the read/write rules.

But at least FM7 loads DocBook XML 4.1.2, which is a big
improvement over FM6+SGML.  If nothing else, there is now
a new hardcopy formatting engine for DocBook, if you
can afford it.  More importantly, if it works as advertised,
it will open up DocBook authoring to a large class of
users who prefer a word processing environment.

-- 

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
Caldera International, Inc.                 fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                            email: bobs@caldera.com


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