DITA, and XMetaL working with FM

[hedley.finger@xxxxxxxx]

I saw a few familar names at Blast Radius' webinar (just concluded) on 
using XMetaL DITA Edition with FrameMaker.  I'm pretty sure I heard Paul 
Prescod say that a build path to go from DITA XML to FM to PDF is being 
added to the DITA open toolkit.  Can anyone confirm this?  Or was it that 
just XMetaL were going to add FM to their version of the toolkit?

The demo looked quite convincing.  Presumably XML topic files are grouped 
into chapters, a book file is built, and populated with those chapters, 
then the TOC and Index is compiled.  Sure like to know how they are doing 
all this from an ANT build file as FM on Windows doesn't have anything 
like the command-line capabilities of fmbatch on UNIX.

And has anybody purchased FrameMaker Server, whatever that is?  The Adobe 
site is rather coy but says that (somehow) you can process RTF, XML, and 
Auld Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all in some kind of batch process.  So what 
IS FM Server?  Is it some kind of command-line version of FM, i.e. fmbatch 
resurrected on Windows.

Anybody like to comment on what they saw?  Did you think that this might 
be a way to avoid XSL-FO and get some more mileage out of all your FM 
licences?

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia <http://myob.com/au>
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia
<mailto:hedleyDOTfingerATmyobDOTcom>
Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

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