DITA 1.2 support in FrameMaker 10

Hello everyone,

Hope you are well. As promised, here is the first post in the series of blog posts that I will be making in the coming weeks to go over the new, exciting functionality of FrameMaker 10.

Today, I will be sharing details on the DITA 1.2 support in FrameMaker10. As you will notice, in addition to the feature overview, there are several **videos **as well in this blog post to describe the new functionality. Just play the video and turn on the speaker volume to listen to the audio. You can zoom in to the page as well to watch the steps in the videos more clearly or you can open the video in another window.

Working with maps

FrameMaker® 10 supports DITA 1.2 features, including new map-level elements. DITA 1.2 map-level features that FrameMaker® support include:

• The <keydef> element and the keys attribute mean you can define keys and related information. Keys are defined in the map together with a link target or text. A keyref is then used by FrameMaker® 10 to redirect a link, a topicref, or a conref to a new target. Undefined keys fall back to the already specified href value.
• The <title> element is now in <reltables>. If you use one or more <reltable> elements, it’s easier to manage this content because the names identify the tables and their purpose.
• The <topicset> support groups a set of topics together that can be referenced by maps as a collection of related content.

View video in a new browser window.

Add a Conref Range

FrameMaker® supports using the conref range to reference a range of elements from another source. A conref range lets you single source a range of elements rather than having to reference each element separately. This is particularly useful when referencing a number of consecutive steps in a task. A conref range is only allowed when elements are siblings (for example: steps, bullets, paragraphs, parameters).

View video in a new browser window.

Update a Conref Range

With a conrefrange, changes to the source range get updated where it is referenced. When changes are made to the source range, like adding a new list item, parameter, or step, the target files are updated as well.

View video in a new browser window.

Using Topic Set References

The <topicsetref> element lets you import sets of topics from one map to another. The DITA 1.2 element <topicsetref> lets you manage groups of topics, refer­encing them from one map to another (or many others). When you make changes to the source map (add or remove topicrefs), the target maps get updated as well.

View video in a new browser window.

These are only some of the enhancements in FrameMaker10 in the DITA space and I hope that you will find these valuable in your workflows.

Stay tuned for more posts on new DITA/XML features in FrameMaker! Until then…

Cheers,

Kapil Verma

Product Manager – FrameMaker and FrameMaker Server