RE: [docbook-apps] Docbook to FrameMaker

["Barton Wright" <barton.wright@streambase.com>]

> I'm looking for a way to get DocBook documents into FrameMaker (7)
> somehow. I read that FrameMaker is supposed to be able to open 
> DocBook directly, but when I open my .xml file, it prompts me 
> for a file type, and DocBook doesn't seem to be in there. I have 
> looked for ways to go from DocBook to MIF, but it seems the 
> only tool capable of this is OpenJade, which I'm having a hard 
> time getting to work. Are there other ways to get my DocBook 
> document into FrameMaker?

Yikes.

At a previous job, we tried using Frame as a DocBook editor and quickly gave up. Here's a summary of what you need to know:

1. There are two versions of Frame 7 in one package. Only Structured FrameMaker has any understanding of XML. You must switch to Structured Frame and restart.

2. Frame has some knowledge of DITA but no native knowledge of the DocBook grammar. Adobe  provides a Frame-DocBook conversion toolkit, which is just that -- a set of tools and guidelines for how you can create an EDD that will read and write DocBook files. An EDD is a Frame-proprietary version of a DTD.

3. Frame just can't keep its hands off your document structure. No matter what you do, even if you get past the daunting EDD stage and manage to get Frame to write out DocBook XML, you'll find that it contains non-standard usages and proprietary extension elements. Unless you add custom post-processing to XML writes, you'll find that Frame generates invalid DocBook XML that will make other tools complain.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not against Frame, and I used it professionally almost every day from 1991 to 2007. What Frame does well, it does very well. But being a DocBook editor is not something Frame does well.