DITA support in Adobe Technical Communication Suite

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.
• 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.

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