FM - PDF Conversions Programatically

[Guest]

Hi All ,
We are going for upgrade of  Frame maker 8 which is on unix system  to FM 10 or 11. 
We are using Framemaker mainly for renditions, i.e to convert the fm documents to PDF. 
To convert fm document to PDF we are using the below mentioned command line utility available in FM 8.(on unix). 
/opt/app/frame8.0/bin/fmprint -i -p Sample.fm.fmtpl Sample.fm 

Currently the the fm file which need to converted to PDF and the FM 8(installed) are available on the same unix system ,so we were able to initiate/use the command line utility of FM 8. 
The rendition of the FM to PDF is On -Demand.( We are not running any batch activities/ bulk renditions).We are rendering the document as soon as the document  is available. 

As we upgrade the FM to newer versions which would be installed on the Windows machine as Frame maker 10 or 11 will not support unix plat form, 
so can you please let us know which option is better to use i.e 
we want to convert fm file to PDF using java program without any manual intevention . 
we came to know that about FDK and extend scripts but we are very new to those !!
could you please any one can provide us ways and provide us sample codes/scripts to convert FM file to PDF !!
and please let us know which one is better client / server version to do this .

[Arnis_Gubins]

Ramesh,

Depending upon your requirements (i.e. frequencey and volume), the FrameMaker Publishing Server version is designed for what you want to do. See:

http://www.adobe.com/products/framemakerpublishingserver.html

However, this is a pricey product for the occassional use scenario. Alternate approaches are to use some of the freebie batch (command line) utilities for FM out there, such as:

DZbatcher from Datazone (http://www.miramo.com/english/overview/download.html)

runfm.exe as part of the mif2go demo package (http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm)

DoBatch from cudspan (http://www.freeframers.org/freeware/cud/)

Note: most of these were created for older versions of FM and may or may not work properly with the newer versions.