RE: .fm vs .e## vs .xml

[Webmaster <Webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello thank you for your quick response.

BACKGROUND: Actually, we're a really small company, I'm the webdeveloper,
and she is a technical writer. She's been asked to take one of her FM files,
and make it into a "website". Well, she doesn't know how to do that, and I
don't like multiple sources, so I suggested DocBook. (because of all the
other outputs she has to do as well) And in addition, this request is going
to become more frequent. The whole idea being we end up with one source:
XML.

So, anyway, now I'm taking DocBook's 1.68.1 style sheets and DocBook DTD
4.1.2, tweeking them to look pretty. She is converting from framemaker files
to structured mode and is using a FM book file. When she exports to XML, I
get a default.xml, with a bunch of entities to other files with the suffix
of .e##. Here is the default.xml:  Can't she just give me .xml files?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE book SYSTEM "file:///C:/DocBook/docbookx.dtd" [

<!-- Begin Document Specific Declarations -->

<?Fm Validation Off?>


<!ENTITY bkc1 SYSTEM "home.e01">
<!ENTITY bkc2 SYSTEM "product_info.e02">
<!ENTITY bkc3 SYSTEM "setup.e03">
<!ENTITY bkc4 SYSTEM "third_party_docs.e04">
<!ENTITY bkc5 SYSTEM "sample_programs.e05">
<!ENTITY bkc6 SYSTEM "how_to.e06">
<!ENTITY bkc7 SYSTEM "license_goahead.e07">
<!ENTITY bkc8 SYSTEM "license_gpl.e08">
<!ENTITY bkc9 SYSTEM "license_cygwin.e09">
<!ENTITY bkc10 SYSTEM "license_ecos.e10">

]>
<?xml-stylesheet href="default.css" type="text/css"?>
<book>&bkc1;&bkc2;&bkc3;&bkc4;&bkc5;&bkc6;&bkc7;&bkc8;&bkc9;&bkc10;</book>



-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Swallow [mailto:techcommdood@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 5:55 PM
To: Webmaster
Cc: framers@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: .fm vs .e## vs .xml


Has the company standardized on a documentation infrastructure? If so,
all writers should conform to it. That resolves the "she's in one tool
and I'm in another" issue.

No, FM cannot edit XML directly.

I don't know what a .e## file is.

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 17:05:08 -0600, Webmaster <Webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I'm using Docbook, and am encouraging my coworker to use DocBook, but she
is
> using  Framemaker 7 - Of which I know little of - although I've been able
to
> manage so far to be her resource to answer her Framemaker questions!
> 
> She is using a FM "book" file, for all practical purposes it seems to work
> for me. But I'm curious:
> 
> 1) Is there a way to setup FM to it can simply edit XML files in FM's
> structured mode? (instead of importing .xml, converting to .fm and
> reexporting to .xml)
> 
> 2) Is there a way for FM to create .xml files instead of a bunch of .e##
> files?
> 
> Or is this how you all do this?

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