Technical Communication

Structured FrameMaker,Adobe FrameMaker,Technical Communication,Adobe Technical Communication Suite,XML Authoring,Template

Similar to text insets, you can use variables in a FrameMaker EDD. In the example below (see Adobe Captivate demo), I have used a set of variables as attribute values.  A paragraph style is applied based on the attribute value as part of a context level formatting rule. If you add a new attribute value to your structured template, you can use one of the pre-defined variables to add that attribute value to the context rule.  Context level formatting rule is updated based on the new attribute value.  Importing element definitions again updates the template.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 06:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Structured FrameMaker,EDD,Text Insets,Single Sourcing,Adobe FrameMaker,DITA

Text insets in Adobe FrameMaker enable re-use of content.  You can import a document into another document as a reference and update the content when the source document changes. 

You can also use text insets in EDD - enabling you to re-use context level formatting rules and elements across elements and structured applications.  First step is to identify the re-usable component.  Once you have identified the re-usable component (for example, an element definition as shown in the Adobe Captivate demo below), you can do the following -

1. Copy the re-usable component (element definition, here) from an existing EDD
2. Go to reference pages
3. Insert a text frame
4. Paste the element definition in the new text frame
5. Add a tag to text frame
6. Come back to Body Pages
7. Select the element and delete it
8. Import the element definition from the same EDD.  Please select reference flow and tag name of the text frame to identify the content.
   

You have created a re-usable element definition.  Same can be repeated for context level formatting rules.  Please see the Adobe Captivate demo below.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Technical Communication: FrameMaker Archives,FrameMaker,DocTrain,Technical Communication,XML authoring,PDF,CMS,conref,MIF,cross-reference,WebDav,STC,Publishing,Patch,p273

We heard!           We worked!           We fixed!

Hello everyone

I am just back from the great ‘DocTrain West’ Conference held at Vancouver. I was really excited to discuss the interesting ideas and thoughts you shared with me in relation to both the short term and long term strategies. As I continued meeting you people, some of you told me about a few issues still faced by you in your workflows. We have been listening to you and we have fixed these problems through yet another patch 8.0.3.

FrameMaker 8.0.3 patch is live now and it is available through Adobe Update Manager (AUM). This patch (8.0p276) must be applied on top of 8.0.2 (8.0p273) only. You can check for updates through Help->Updates Menu in FrameMaker. Currently this update is available for English, French and German installations and we would shortly make it available for Japanese too.

With the help of these fixes, following workflows are now enabled/supported:

• DITA conrefs get resolved properly.
• Extended characters do not have a preceding space when using Arial Unicode MS font.
• Higher code point characters are not dropped on MIF open.
• FM catalogs sort properly.
• Quotation marks look as per the expectation in documents with Chinese, Japanese and Korean combination fonts.
• While using combined fonts, non-Asian characters present in the Asian font are now displayed using non-Asian fonts.
• Random letters do not disappear from text line present in oval within anchored Frame.
• Use of page range in Index does not randomly add question marks left and right in the generated index file.
• Characters do not become invisible on the screen on the next line while hyphenating words just before the accented chars.
• The NextPfgTag is correctly applied when pressing Enter at the beginning of the line.
• FM does not crash when a document containing hypertext (spread over two lines) to marker is saved.
• FM spellchecker uses user.dct entries
• History palette records typing command in text line.
• FM does not crash on saving a file after deleting split-ed text line.
• Pressing space button at the start of line does not place cursor at the end of line.
• Drag does not fail even if the target is a locked range.
• For a 3D imported by reference, on moving it from hidden to show all after applying conditional text, the referenced path is not lost.
• FM does not crash when a graphic file with object properties dialog open is overwritten at the system.
• Importing object to the second file when "Quick Access Bar" and "Formatting Bar" are open and then closing the file, does not crash FM.
• Converting a cross-reference to text does not crash FrameMaker when the format of the cross-reference has been edited.
• Performing a find change using the backwards option does not lead to a crash.
• Change All operation of a character does not crash FM.
• When an equation is applied in conditional text and hidden, it does not lead to a crash.
• The hyphenation of words in old Netherland language does not change character case.
• In Netherland language words do not get corrupted when un-hyphenation is done with the words having dieresis.
• Garbage characters are not shown in Tab stop list box if a legacy file containing higher ANSI characters in Align field of decimal tab is opened in FM 8.
• Japanese tab stops now work in FM 8.

This patch has fixes for some more issues not listed above.

Please install this patch on top of 8.0.2, retest your workflows and share your feedback with me.

Thanks

-Mahesh (mahesh@adobe.com)

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 08:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe FrameMaker,CMS Integration,WebDAV enhancements,Standard based integration,proprietary integration

WebDAV is a standard protocol and is supported by most Content Management Systems (CMS).  FrameMaker has built-in support for connecting to any WebDAV server and accessing files.  It enables browsing the repository, selecting files and checking them out from the Server. 

• When a file is managed by a WebDAV server, multiple users can download copies of the file, but only one user at a time can check out the file. The user who checks out the file can share his or her work with other users by updating the file on the server; however, other users can't make changes to the managed file until it is checked in. This check out/check in system allows multiple users to access the same file but prevents users from overwriting each other's work.
• Because WebDAV works over Web accessible networks, location doesn't matter. Team members can share files regardless of their proximity.

Your local machine has a directory structure that mirrors the WebDAV server structure, so when you check out files, the files are downloaded to your machine and placed in the mirrored folder.

FrameMaker 8 has extended the WebDAV support to allow authoring and editing of XML files located on the server.  In addition, FrameMaker 8 allows you to specify an HTTP path to import graphics into a document, either by copying or by reference. The HTTP path is preserved in the XML. 

WebDAV provides a standard way of integrating with diverse Content Management Systems today.  The other alternative is to build a custom integration with each of the CMS using the proprietary APIs by the CMS.  A custom integration is not only expensive to build and maintain, but it also locks down customers to a particular version of a particular CMS.  At the same time, WebDAV is a low level protocol (the least common denominator) and hence, to enable a seamless workflow, an authoring tool like FrameMaker needs to build logic to process the referenced files, related topics and so on.  Overall, in my opinion, the benefits of using a standard based approach outweigh the custom integration using proprietary APIs.

In future, I see two pronged approach towards enhancing CMS integration with FrameMaker.

• Enabling HTTP path for all referenced files – By enabling an http path for all referenced files in a FrameMaker document, book or DITAMap, FrameMaker will provide a better experience for authors working directly from the CMS.  For example, if you have a DITAMap open in FrameMaker and you double-click on the DITA Topic (which has an http path), FrameMaker will open the topic for you. 
• Enabling WebDAV based access to browse the repository and explicitly check-out and check-in files from the Server. When a file is checked-out, FrameMaker will also bring the referenced files in read-only mode to provide a better authoring experience. 

Posted by Vivek Jain at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe Technical Communication Suite,Technical Communication,RoboHelp,FrameMaker,HAT,Online Help,XML,Training,Videos

Adobe Senior Product Evangelist, RJ Jácquez, has created three On Demand training videos to help customers get started with Adobe Technical Communication Suite.  A large number of customers have been asking us for training material on the Suite. I hope you will find this useful.  Please see the details below-

NEW Training Video! Getting Started with the Technical Communication Suite: Part 1 (http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p29205929/)

In Part 1, you will learn about leveraging live and interactive 3D models from virtual any CAD/CAM/CAE software in your technical and instructional documents using the Adobe Technical Communication Suite.  This training video includes all exercise files needed for you to follow along with the presenter, and experience first-hand how to convert a 3D CAD file into a highly compressed 3D PDF document and how the included 3D Toolkit software allows you to reuse this model in FrameMaker and then generate an interactive and rich PDF document, that you can distribute to anyone using the free Adobe Reader. The video also guides you through the steps on how to further polish your 3D models using 3D materials and by adding animation that shows your end-users how to disassemble the model.

NEW Training Video! Getting Started with the Technical Communication Suite: Part 2 (http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p25426010/)

In Part 2, you will learn how to supplement your technical and instructional design documents with engaging Adobe Captivate demonstrations, simulations and quizzes in the Flash format using the Adobe Technical Communication Suite.  This training video includes all exercise files needed for you to follow along with the presenter and experience first-hand how to create engaging Captivate demonstrations, simulations and quizzes that can be imported into FrameMaker documents and saved as PDF files, that end-users can playback using the free Adobe Reader.  The video also guides you through the steps needed to add a printing poster in FrameMaker and how to generate a single .SWF file from Captivate, which includes the playback bar in the PDF file, as well as other best practices.

NEW Training Video! Getting Started with the Technical Communication Suite: Part 3 (http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p13101233/)

In Part 3, you will learn about adding FrameMaker books and documents in RoboHelp as live links and reusing FrameMaker content for creating Online Help systems, Searchable Knowledge bases, Performance Support systems and even Policies and Procedures.  Just like the first two, the exercise files are also included in case you want to go over the integration features yourself.

Besides Adobe Technical Communication Suite, there are training videos for Adobe FrameMaker 8 and Adobe RoboHelp 7 available on Help Resource Center.  Adobe Certified Trainers (for example, John Daigle is a certified trainer for RoboHelp and Captivate) can help you with formal training, if required.  If you are looking for formal training, you can locate Adobe Authorized Trainers in your area from Adobe site.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FrameMaker,Chautauqua,Technical Communication,XML authoring,XML document,PDF,Review,Commenting

Hi

I got so occupied with various activities here that I just realized it’s been over 2 months since I made my last post. Now I’ll try to be regular.

So folks, I hope you have finalized your plans for the ‘FrameMaker Chautauqua’ conference. I too have planned to attend.

I am looking forward to use this opportunity by meeting you at the conference.

Thanks and regards

Mahesh K Gupta

Product Manager – Adobe FrameMaker

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FrameMaker,track text edits,Technical Communication,XML authoring,XML document,PDF,Review,Commenting

With FrameMaker 8, we introduced an ability to track edits in text. The biggest benefit is in the review workflow.  As we started planning the documentation for the next version of FrameMaker, it became obvious that track text edits in FrameMaker 8 will be a great time saver for both the teams – the product development team (which reviews the content) and the documentation team (which develops the content).  Review is fundamental to ensuring content completeness and accuracy and with incremental development models gaining popularity, content development is also incremental.  This increases the importance of managing content changes through milestones.

I am sure a number of FrameMaker customers are already using from this new feature. Do share your feedback.

Note - For details on what is tracked and what is not, please refer to FrameMaker User Guide.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HAT,RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D,Technical Communication Suite,Online Help,Knowledge Base,Print,XML,DITA

I am seeing a number of debates happening across support forums and mailing lists about which authoring tool (FrameMaker or RoboHelp) is better suited for a specific purpose.  Both RoboHelp and FrameMaker are really powerful authoring tools for technical communication.  FrameMaker provides a print WYSIWYG authoring environment and is the best Print and PDF publishing tool.  RoboHelp provides an HTML WYSIWYG authoring environment and is the best publishing tool for knowledge bases and online help with support for largest number of output formats. RoboHelp supports Dynamic HTML effects while auto-numbering and cross-references are major strengths of FrameMaker. 

Both FrameMaker and RoboHelp provide

• strong support for single sourcing including variables, conditional tags and snippets (text insets in FrameMaker),
• support for multiple TOCs, indexes, glossaries,
• support for tables, images, Captivate demos, Flash, 3D PDFs,
• template based authoring,
• support for long documents (FrameMaker books often exceed 1,000 pages) and large projects (RoboHelp projects often exceed 1500 topics) and so on.  

With Adobe Technical Communication Suite, you don't need to choose between RoboHelp and FrameMaker.  You get both of them (with Captivate and Acrobat 3D) at an attractive price. Adobe Technical Communication Suite provides a complete solution for technical communication.  Adobe Technical Communication Suite is probably the right product for you, if any of the following holds true -

• PDF/print is an important output format for you (need FrameMaker and Acrobat), or
• You send documentation for review to subject matter experts, customers and vendors (need Acrobat 3D for PDF based review and commenting workflow along with FrameMaker or RoboHelp), or
• You are publishing or planning to publish for multiple channels – PDF or print and online help (need FrameMaker, Acrobat and RoboHelp). 
• You are using Structured FrameMaker for authoring XML documents and want a more flexible solution than XSL transforms and reduce the cost to customize and manage XSL transforms for every minor change needed in the Online Help output (need FrameMaker and RoboHelp), or
• You are authoring in DITA and need a better publishing tool than DITA open toolkit (need FrameMaker, Acrobat and RoboHelp), or
• You want to improve the effectiveness of your technical communication by using Flash movies or Adobe Captivate demos to illustrate the workflows (need Captivate along with RoboHelp or FrameMaker), or
• You are part of an industry where 3D visualization can substantially improve  effectiveness of technical communication, for example, manufacturing - engineering, automobiles, construction, aerospace, real estate and so on (need Acrobat 3D with RoboHelp or FrameMaker), or
• You are currently using or will use two or more products from the Suite (FrameMaker, RoboHelp, Captivate and Acrobat 3D). 

I certainly believe that above scenarios hold true for most of the technical communicators. In a later post, I will discuss further on this topic.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 01:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Knowledge base software,help authoring tool,RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Technical Communication Suite,Single Sourcing

Adobe RoboHelp 7 has one of the most innovative and powerful feature of single sourcing, support for hierarchical TOC and hierarchical Index.  When you bring content from several sources in RoboHelp, RoboHelp enables you to add that content in a specific folder.  For example, for a FrameMaker book, RoboHelp creates a master folder at the book level and sub-folders each representing the Chapters in the book. 

In addition, you can create a separate TOC and Index for each of the FrameMaker documents you add as a live link in Adobe Technical Communication Suite.  In the example here, Agreement TOC and Agreement Index are created specifically for the FrameMaker book - Experience Bank. 

By enabling multiple TOC, Index and Glossary, RoboHelp allows to manage your content in a separate space.  When you update the content in FrameMaker document, the TOC and Index for the linked FrameMaker books are automatically updated.

In RoboHelp 7, you can now add a TOC inside a TOC as a placeholder enabling a hierarchical structure for TOC. Similarly, you can now add an Index inside an Index as placeholder enabling a hierarchical structure for Indices.  This is a really powerful functionality for single sourcing.

Please let me know your comments and suggestions.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Adobe Technical Communication Suite,Help Authoring Tool,HAT,HTML publishing,knowledge base,knowledge base software

Adobe Technical Communication Suite enables a single sourcing workflow from FrameMaker to RoboHelp for HTML publishing.  While it is ideal to maintain all the content in FrameMaker, there are special situations which may require the RoboHelp content to be out of sync from FrameMaker documents either for short duration or for small set of topics.  These special situations can relate to project deadlines or project requirements which make the process of maintaining a single source difficult.

Adobe RoboHelp 7, as part of Adobe Technical Communication Suite, provides a new and really powerful functionality of managing this Out of Synchronization behavior.  First, it provides a visual indicator the moment there is a change in RoboHelp content for a Linked FrameMaker document.  Second, it allows you to select a set of topics which you want to preserve when the content is updated again.  Since you can manage this at HTML topic level, you can control this at a granular level. Lastly, you can also delete topics and not regenerate these topics during the next update.

Here is a Captivate demo of this feature (Update - I am adding a "Click to Start" button on the demos - Thanks Rick for your suggestion). Do share your comments and suggestions with me.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Technical Communication,Adobe,DITA,Authoring,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D,Suite

FrameMaker 8.0.1 patch is live now. This patch has fixes for several reported problems. The key areas include:

1. PDF: Text going behind tables, tag structure not correct as per accessibility standards etc.
2. XML / DITA: Fixes for crashers, handling invalid input, bugs related to Unicode etc. Apart from this, two functionality workflows that we have fixed are:
   1. Enabling round-tripping of user-variables in DITA files
   2. Enabling Track Changes in DITA file
3. Conditional expressions for Books
4. Track Text Edits: Crashers, some workflow issues. There are fixes for some Japanese locale specific bugs too.

These bug fixes are in addition to localization, installation, FDK, Server, documentation and Suite features.

These patches are available at the following locations:

UNIX - http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=22&platform=unix

Windows - http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=22&platform=win

 - Mahesh

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Technical Communication Suite,HAT,Help Authoring Tool,Single Source,HTML publishing

Adobe Technical Communication Suite enables a HTML publishing workflow from FrameMaker to RoboHelp.  While adding FrameMaker files as live links in RoboHelp, you can map FrameMaker styles to RoboHelp styles.  RoboHelp uses a specific style sheet fmstyles.css which can be modified for custom needs. 

1. The style information in RoboHelp can also be edited after the content has been imported in RoboHelp.  Please make sure you make these style changes in fmstyles.css since all the style sheets in the RoboHelp project for FrameMaker files are derived from this style sheet.  If you make changes in this style sheet, all the linked chapters from the FrameMaker book will inherit the change which will be consistently applied across the project.

2. If you want to edit the style information specific to a Chapter (from the FrameMaker book), you may want to create a style in FrameMaker for that Chapter. By creating a unique style specific to that Chapter, you can now map this style to any RoboHelp style. If needed, you can also add styles in fmstyles.css.  The style sheet can be edited using RoboHelp User Interface.

I am including a Captivate demo of how you can edit style information for linked FrameMaker files (Update- I have added a "Click to Start" button to the demo). I hope you will find this useful.  Please let me know your comments.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Technical Communication,DITA,Suite,Help Authoring Tool,HAT

I have been talking about various features and settings for linking FrameMaker documents in RoboHelp. Today, I’ll take you through the functionality offered when the linking of files is already done. Yes, let’s see how you can update these files.

If you want to change some of the settings you specified at the time of linking files, right-click on the linked file and select ‘Properties’.

‘FrameMaker Document Settings’ Dialog opens up. All the setting dialogs which were seen during the initial linking can be seen as tabs here.

You can choose to update a particular chapter by changing the settings for that particular chapter or you can update the settings for the whole book (right click the book icon and then change properties).

Once settings are changed, the icon changes to red representing an internal un-synchronization.

As can be seen below, if properties are changed for the whole book, all child level entries too get unsynchronized.

Right-clicking an icon gives the update options. Just choose whether you want a simple Update or Force Update. One the selection is made, RoboHelp will quickly update your files taking care of your updated settings!

- Mahesh

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 08:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Technical Communication,DITA,Suite,Help Authoring Tool,HAT

Table of Contents (TOC) is an important part of FrameMaker books. RoboHelp recognizes this importance and allows the conversion of your source FrameMaker TOC to the corresponding TOC in RoboHelp.

I’ll explain the steps with an example. At the time of importing/linking FrameMaker book,

1. Place a check in the ‘ConvertFrameMaker Table of Contents’ box in the Content Settings dialog.

2. Click to open the Browse FrameMaker file dialog.

3. Navigate to the source files folder, select the source TOC and click ‘Open’. By Default, the TOC path would be populated with the first TOC file in the book. If your book has multiple TOCs, you can choose the one of your interest.

4. Select the Create new associated TOC radio button. This will create a RoboHelp TOC for the imported FrameMaker topics.

5. Enter a name for the this TOC. For our example, I have called it ‘TOC1’.

On completion of the import process, ‘TOC1’ would be created under ‘Table of Contents’ folder in the ‘Project Manager’ pod as shown below.

Double clicking ‘TOC1’ would open the TOC.

Snap-shot of the source TOC is shown below. We see that ‘Filter By Attribute’ is a book in the RoboHelp TOC. Topics under this book are same and in the same order as in the source TOC.

The styles in your FrameMaker TOC determine which headings become books, sub-books, or pages in the RoboHelp TOC. These levels are based on the following elements in the decreasing order of priority:

• Left-most indent
• Font Size
• Font Weight

Note: Headings with indented items are converted to book entries.

In Adobe RoboHelp 7, a project can have multiple TOCs, multiple indexes and multiple glossaries. In addition to creating multiple TOCs and indexes, RoboHelp also provides an ability to create a hierarchical structure of TOCs and indexes. For more information, please visit my following blog post

http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2007/10/content_aggregation_workflow_i_1.html

- Mahesh

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 08:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Technical Communication,DITA,Suite,Help Authoring Tool,HAT

Perhaps the most important, and most powerful, feature of the FrameMaker import process is the style mappings. You can map FrameMaker paragraph and character styles to RoboHelp styles, which will automatically reformat your FrameMaker content for publication in RoboHelp. In addition, you can also specify:

• New definitions for FrameMaker cross-reference formats (e.g., to remove page numbers from cross-references in RoboHelp output)
• Style names that will trigger topic breaks in RoboHelp
• FrameMaker styles to ignore when the styles are imported into RoboHelp
• A default RoboHelp style to be applied to unmapped FrameMaker styles

Now, I’ll take you through some of these features in detail.

In the Style Conversion Settings section of the Settings dialog, there is an option to Convert AutoNumber to HTML list. This is generally preferred if the FrameMaker document does not include complex numbering (e.g., multilevel section numbering).

If you want to use a user defined HTML Tag for the paragraph styles, you can specify the tag e.g. ‘Pre’ tag. You can even choose the styles where this tag should be applied.

For applying properties, Click Select to open the FrameMaker Styles Conversion Properties dialog. Select the styles where these properties should be applied. Click OK to close the FrameMaker Styles Conversion Properties dialog and to return to the Style Settings dialog.

In the Style Mappings section of the Style Settings dialog, click Edit. The FrameMaker - RoboHelp Style Mappings dialog opens. In this dialog you can map each FrameMaker paragraph, cross reference, and character style to a RoboHelp style.

Select the type of style you want to map from the Style Mapping Type list. By default, the paragraph styles are selected. The individual paragraph styles found in the FrameMaker document and the RoboHelp project are displayed as shown in the screen-shot below. The FrameMaker styles are listed in the left column; the RoboHelp styles are listed in the right column. By default, each RoboHelp style is set to [source], which indicates that the FrameMaker style has not been mapped to a RoboHelp style. Preview of these styles is available in the bottom part of the dialog.

You may want to use different cross-reference styles in print form and Help deliverables. For example, page numbers are useful in PDF documents, but have no meaning in Online Help. You can map FrameMaker cross-reference formats to RoboHelp Cross Reference styles with appropriate definitions for online delivery.

For the screen-shot shown below, you may want to change the ‘Heading & Page’ cross-reference to paragraph text. Click Heading & Page to select the cross-reference style. The current definition includes a page number. Double-click <$paratext> to adjust the cross-reference format to specify only the title of the target topic.

I will touch other aspects in my next post. You can reach me at mahesh@adobe.com

Mahesh

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Technical Communication,DITA,Suite,Help Authoring Tool

Adobe Technical Communication Suite comprises of Adobe FrameMaker 8, Adobe RoboHelp 7, Adobe Captivate 3 and Adobe Acrobat 3D ver 8. FrameMaker 8 extends the structured authoring functionality of FrameMaker to enable authors to work efficiently with DITA. With Captivate and Acrobat 3D, you can add Flash demo files and 3D models in FrameMaker 8. On the output side, FrameMaker lets you build a FrameMaker book from a DITA map to generate PDF and online help. Once you have created a FrameMaker Book, RoboHelp provides an ability to add them as live links, that is, any update to the Book will get reflected in Help output with just two clicks (Update and Publish). With RoboHelp 7, you can generate any of the output formats like CHM, WebHelp, FlashHelp, JavaHelp or OracleHelp. 

DITA is now core part of our product strategy. As customers adopt DITA and standards evolve, I envision enhanced support for DITA across Adobe Technical Communication Suite.

DITA Support in FrameMaker 8 - The DITA functionality of FrameMaker 8 is provided by a set of application features combined with a set of structure applications, which together provide core tools for DITA authoring and publishing. The DITA functionality of FrameMaker 8 can be extended for a variety of uses.

FrameMaker offers a range of features for DITA support:

• Import/Export processing: Includes the use of some FrameMaker-specific constructs and elements (notable by their fm prefix), which are present while authoring in FrameMaker but translated to DITA-conformant XML during the import/export process. This ensures interoperability with other systems.
• DITA map support: FrameMaker offers a structure application for creating and editing DITA maps, as well as managing relationship tables. Double-clicking on a topic within a map opens that topic for editing.
• Conref support: When you open a file, FrameMaker resolves conrefs, and displays the referenced content as a text inset in the open document. FrameMaker also features the Reference Manager dialog box for inserting conrefs.
• Xref support: When you open a file, FrameMaker automatically resolves <xref> elements and displays any associated text within FrameMaker. You can turn this feature on or off.
• Output support: For generating Adobe PDF content, FrameMaker lets you build a FrameMaker book from a DITA map. As the XML authored in FrameMaker conforms to the DITA standard for structure, you can also publish using other DITA tools, such as the DITA Open Toolkit. You can also download the Adobe FrameMaker 8 plug-in for DITA Open Toolkit from FrameMaker Development Center.
• Publishing to HTML using RoboHelp: FrameMaker lets you build a FrameMaker book from a DITA map.  RoboHelp as part of Adobe Technical Communication Suite provides an ability to add FrameMaker Books as live links. With RoboHelp, you can add breadcrumbs, browse sequences, Index, TOC, Glossary, Dynamic HTML effects to help output and also map FrameMaker styles to RoboHelp styles, generate context sensitive help mapping files and aggregate content from other applications like Word, DreamWeaver.

You can customize the DITA features of FrameMaker using the DITA Options dialog box or by editing the ditafm.ini file.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

RoboHelp,Captivate,Acrobat,3D,FrameMaker,HAT,Help Authoring Tool,Technical Communication,Suite

Adobe Technical Communication Suite provides an attractive opportunity to upgrade for existing customers of FrameMaker, RoboHelp and Captivate.  You can upgrade from any previous version of these products at a special discount. As a general rule of thumb, if you are currently using or plan to use more than one of the four products, you may find upgrade an attractive option.

Most FrameMaker users also use Adobe Acrobat software. By upgrading to Adobe Technical Communication Suite you get all the new features of FrameMaker 8 — including Unicode, DITA, 3D support, and enhanced conditional text handling—plus all features of Acrobat 3D Version 8. In addition, you get various enhancements that are unique to FrameMaker 8 for Adobe Technical Communication Suite, such as improved integration with Adobe RoboHelp 7, Adobe Captivate 3, and RoboScreen Capture. You can use the complete help authoring and publishing features of RoboHelp 7 to create help systems and knowledge bases. Adobe Captivate 3 enables the production of product simulations and demonstrations in the Adobe Flash® format by combining a realtime screen capture technology with a powerful editing environment for creating professional, interactive tutorials (complete with scenario branching and quizzes), without programming knowledge or multimedia skills. Based on the industryleading Adobe Flash platform, Adobe Captivate 3 automatically generates interactive, Adobe Flash Player compatible content that can be easily inserted into your FrameMaker and RoboHelp projects, Adobe PDF documents, or distributed via e-mail or the Web.

Engineering design and manufacturing professionals benefit from the latest version of Acrobat 3D along with the ability to export to standard 3D formats. With this suite, you will also be able to incorporate 3D models directly into FrameMaker 8, enabling you to produce rich technical PDF documents with live 3D models. In addition, you will be able to leverage the strengths and benefits of RoboHelp 7 and Adobe Captivate 3 to help meet your other technical communication needs, including the creation of help and support systems, product demonstrations, and simulations.

As a RoboHelp user, you get all the new features of RoboHelp 7 (including Unicode support, breadcrumb navigation support, a new user interface, and enhanced support for single-sourcing) plus enhancements that are only available in RoboHelp 7 for Adobe Technical Communication Suite, such as the ability to work with FrameMaker source files by adding them as links in RoboHelp projects. This provides a high level of control over online output by enabling you to define output settings and style mappings. You can embed engaging Adobe Captivate  demonstrations in RoboHelp projects, and select from a range of output formats, including WebHelp Pro and Adobe FlashHelp® Pro.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 02:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Technical Communication,Suite,HAT,Help Authoring,Knowledge Base,Policies and Procedures

When you import or add FrameMaker files (.book, .fm and .mif) in Adobe RoboHelp 7, you can also generate Context Sensitive Map IDs from FrameMaker source files. RoboHelp can convert custom markers defined in FrameMaker to map IDs and create bookmarks in HTML topics created during the import.  

Authors can choose any custom marker and apply it at the beginning of the paragraphs in the source files. A unique ID should be specified as the marker text at the time of applying this marker. Since this marker text would be used as the marker ID, the marker text should contain only alphanumeric and ‘_’ (underscore) character as shown in the figure below. The custom marker applied is ‘ExpBank’ and the FrameMaker ID for this paragraph is specified as ‘Marker1_Authorised_Persons’.

At the time of importing/adding files in RoboHelp, you need to specify the customer marker type. By default, ‘Define Context Sensitive Help Marker’ text-field is populated with the entry ‘TopicAlias’ and should be overwritten with the appropriate marker name, in this case with ‘ExpBank’ (please see the figure below).

RoboHelp processes the FrameMaker markers with this Marker type. and corresponding RoboHelp numeric Id and associated bookmarks are created. These associations can be seen in the ‘Edit Map IDs’ Dialog (available under ‘Context-Sensitive Help’ in the ‘Project Set-up’ pod).

First Column ‘Map ID’ represents the same ID specified in FrameMaker as the marker text. Second column gives the numeric Map ID which is used in the output and the third column represents the target bookmark.

Update (posted on March 26, 2008 by Vivek Jain) - The behavior has changed after RoboHelp patch 7.0.1. RoboHelp does not generate the mapIDs automatically and enables you to load the developer provided mapping files. If you are generating mapping files for your developers, please generate it through RoboHelp and export it. For importing the mapping file -> Go to Project Settings Pod, open Context Sensitive Help folder and right click on Map Files. You shall get Import Map File option in the context menu. In the import dialog box you will get option to import .hh, .hm and .h files. Please ensure that Locked option at the bottom is checked. RoboHelp will not touch your file if this option is on.

You can also see a report on the Map Ids (Tools->Reports) as shown in the screen-shot below.

The Map IDs can be tested through the ‘CSH Test’ tool. This tool (shown in the following figure) can be used for testing online/offline help.

In addition, RoboHelp provides several other features like changing the associations, importing and exporting map files etc. 

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 01:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Technical Communication,Suite,HAT,Help Authoring,Knowledge Base,Policies and Procedures

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 06:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D,Technical Communication,FrameMaker 8,RoboHelp 7,Technical Communication Suite

Adobe FrameMaker 8 is available now. 

The year 2007 is turning out be an exciting one for Adobe in technical communication. We already had four product releases - Adobe RoboHelp 6, Adobe Acrobat 3D ver 8, Adobe FrameMaker 8 and Adobe Captivate 3, and we have another 5 months to go before we end this year. 

FrameMaker 8 is probably one of the most significant releases in the history of FrameMaker.  With Unicode, DITA, support for Flash, 3D, conditional text enhancements, Filter by Attribute, Track text edits and so on, FrameMaker 8 is a feature packed release.  This time, we had a very active pre-release program and that has greatly helped in improving the product.  Also, the development team led by Rajat Bansal has demonstrated exemplary commitment in making this release possible.  We have certainly achieved more than what we initially set out to do.

With the release of FrameMaker 8, we are entering a period of accelerated development for FrameMaker.  We have started planning for the next version and if you have a feature enhancement request, do let us know.

Update - We recently announced Adobe Technical Communication Suite and Adobe RoboHelp 7.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

FrameMaker,FrameMaker 8

I feel happy to inform you that FrameMaker 8 has been announced and is expected to ship worldwide by the end of July 2007. (Press Release, FrameMaker 8)

FrameMaker 8 has been designed to help its users take advantage of emerging technologies in technical communication and to meet the new challenges thrown up by a fast globalizing world. I would like to invite you to participate in the eSeminars listed below to see whats new in FrameMaker 8. (click here to register)

You would also be able to download and test a fully functional 30 day trial version of FrameMaker 8 by the end of July 2007. The FrameMaker product team would be happy to receive your feedback on the release.

Thank you

Introducing Adobe FrameMaker 8 : Now with Flash, 3D, DITA and Unicode support!
Thursday, July 26th, 2007 10:00 AM PDT (click here to register)
Learn about the much anticipated new release of Adobe FrameMaker 8 that will revolutionize how content is authored and consumed. Packed with features for everyone like: track text changes and other review workflow improvements, more XML single-sourcing features, DITA, support for live 3D models and much more.

FrameMaker Deep Dive: DITA Topic-based authoring and single sourcing
Thursday, August 9th, 2007 10:00 AM PDT (click here to register)
Take an in depth look into new support for DITA Topic-based authoring, advanced single sourcing features and improvements to the review and collaboration workflow (e.g. track text edits).

Benefits of FrameMaker for structured and unstructured documents
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 10:00 AM PDT (click here to register)
Learn about Adobe FrameMaker’s capabilities to create structured and unstructured content. Should you migrate to structure and what to consider if you do? How do you structure your content? Explanation of some terms used in structured application development (e.g. EDD, XSLT).

Posted by at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Technical,Communication,RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D,Sneak Peek,new release

STC 54th Annual Conference in Minneapolis was a great success. From Adobe perspective, we had a strong presence with eight sessions on FrameMaker, RoboHelp and Captivate.  Each of the sessions included technology sneak peeks for the corresponding Adobe product.  The feedback from the sneak peeks has been very positive. We also had a constant stream of visitors coming over at the Adobe booth seeking more information about these products. More importantly, we had an opportunity to meet a large number of customers, experts and partners.  We also had several 1:1 customer meetings to understand their requirements and collect feedback on our products.

You have most probably seen the discussion on forums and blogs on the sneak peeks. If you have any comments or suggestions, please do let me know.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 06:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[2 July 2007 - Adobe is not accepting any more volunteers for FrameMaker Beta Program]

Finally the day lot of us have been waiting for... I am happy to share with you that the FrameMaker Beta 1 is already under testing by a select group of FrameMaker experts. And, their initial reviews are very encouraging.

The FrameMaker product team is looking for volunteers to participate in FrameMaker Prerelease Beta 2. Please click here to apply by filling up the FrameMaker Prerelease participation form. If your application is approved, you would soon be able to download the prerelease build. We would inform you once Beta 2 is available for testing.

Please Note: During the application process, please use the "Existing Users" section if you have an existing Adobe Prerelease system (https://prerelease.adobe.com) account. If you are participating in prerelease programs for the first time and do not possess a prior account, then use the "New Users" section and provide your email address. A mail containing a link to the Prerelease program will be sent to the specified email address as verification. Use this link in that mail to continue with the registration process to join the Prerelease program.

We look forward to your participation.

Thank you

Aseem - FrameMaker Product Manager

Posted by at 08:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Technical,communication,Adobe,Windows Vista,robohelp,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D

There have been some questions on Windows Vista support. Adobe FrameMaker 7.2 and Adobe RoboHelp 6 do not support Windows Vista. However, the next versions currently under development for both FrameMaker and RoboHelp will support Windows Vista.

Update - Adobe FrameMaker 8, Adobe RoboHelp 7 and Adobe Technical Communication Suite support Windows Vista and Office 2007. If you are publishing online help or HTML help and looking at a cross platform solution, you can download RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR . RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR generates cross-platform online help and provides two additional skins - Multi Tab Accordion and Unipane .

Posted by Vivek Jain at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Very often I come across the question – Why DITA? Here is an interesting analogy to try and answer the same. The purpose is not to define DITA, but to share my perspective on what DITA may imply for the technical authoring community.

In the XML authoring paradigm, the document is split into structure, content and style, which are analogues to Driving Rules (structure), car (content) and road network (style). If the content and the style are as per same structure (DTD/Schema), you can generate the output by combining content with the style-sheet.  However, it would not be possible to generate proper output using content and style sheets based on different structures. Similarly, if the cars and the road networks are designed as per same driving rules everything runs smoothly. However, if they are designed as per different driving rules, there would be chaos. E.g. it is difficult to drive a car designed for the US (right hand drive) in UK, where the road networks are designed as per left hand drive.

In a hypothetical world, where each country has its unique set of driving rules, the design of cars and road networks are unique to each country. It is difficult to drive a car designed for country X in country Y. XML authoring leads to a similar situation. Each organization and team has its own set of driving rules (Structure – DTD/Schema), hence it is difficult to share content or apply the same style sheet to content aggregated from different sources.

Imagine if all countries followed the same driving rules. All cars can be driven in any country, and the road networks could be designed, as per the driving rules, without any knowledge of the actual cars that would drive on it. DITA is similar to these universal driving rules. If everyone follows the DITA specifications, it would be easy to share content and apply the same style sheets to the aggregated content.

There have been other standards (universal driving rules) that have come up in the past. But they were good for specific kind of documents (terrains). DITA is different, as it is based on the premises that the same set of driving rules cannot be applied to all terrains (desert, mountains, city, etc.). Therefore, DITA allows each country to specialize the driving rules for its own unique requirements. In addition, DITA also has recommendations on the content (car) design – i.e. topics. This further makes it easier to reuse, manage and share content.

This is what makes DITA promising and makes it worth a serious consideration.

Posted by at 01:46 PM |