RE: Summary - XML and Frame, what can it do? (LONG)

[Ron Nelson <rnelson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Many thanks to all who responded so quickly and thoroughly!

I have to say that one of the great things about this group is how many of
you chided me for including the phrases "forget about it, it can't be done"
at the end of my original post.  The overwhelming consensus is that it can
almost always be done, the question is at what cost and how much time do you
have?

now for the summary:

Right up-front for all who, like me, are starting from square one, the base
Frame product will probably not do what I wanted, FM+SGML is necessary.
That being the case:

1. Is anyone using Frame 5.5.6s XML export and how is it?
	>Frame uses the style name to create XML elements for the output,
similar to 
the HTML export.  You can then go onto the reference page and map each 
paragraph style to whatever element name you want to.  There are limited
ways of creating 
nested structure, but it is not very robust.  If you want to have a more
complex nested structure, possibly 
validated against a DTD, you will most likely be disappointed.  

	>If you want to get an
unstructured document into XML, it does a good job of it - exactly how
useful that
XML is depends on your data.

	>The problems come in when you try to do anything else with the XML
...

	>. It exports with the UTF-8 character set rather than ASCII or
proper Unicode, which confuses a lot of post-processing tools (which mostly
seem to be SGML tools slightly modified so expect simple ASCII). 


2.  Can DTDs and EDDs be created for XML as with SGML?
	>ONLY WITH FMSGML, NOT REGULAR FRAME.  ONCE CREATED AS DTDs/EDDs,
NEED
CONVERTED TO SCHEMA

	>FM+SGML 5.5.6 won't read in an XML DTD at all. If you've got an
SGML DTD that describes the document model you're working with, you can just
continue to use it

	>DTD's - Yes, EDD - No.  Frame does not currently support importing
XML, 
only exporting.  You would need to use an XML editor to really work with 
the raw XML file.

3.  If so, can elements be searched easily
	>Well, not in Frame.  
	
	>Far more easily than SGML. In SGML you were restricted to OmniMark
and a couple of
other applications capable of really making sense out of the data - with XML
you
could use the DOM (for one) to expose the tree.

4.  is there any way for an XML document to be translated back to Frame
for repurposing or further editing?
	>of course, there is always a way.  The question is, "is there a 
plausible, workable, possibly inexpensive way" the answer to this question 
would be, it depends on what you think is plausible, workable and/or 
expensive.  Generally speaking I would say no

	>Yes, as long as you provide the right configuration. You don't
actually want to
convert from SGML to XML, you want them to be ubiquitous.

	>NOT YET.  WATCH ADOBE AND FUTURE FRAME RELEASES FOR DETAILS. SOME
CONVERSION
HOUSES OFFER THIS SERVICE

 
All in all, it sounds like I first need to convince the folks with the purse
strings that, for what they would like to do, we need to move to FM+SGML

Thanks again for all of the help
 
Ron Nelson
 

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