1 Reply Latest reply: Nov 12, 2013 6:59 AM by Jim A Owens RSS

    What is the right CMS for FrameMaker 11 and DITA?

    NewUser Community Member
    NewUser Nov 12, 2013 6:20 AM

      Hello,

       

      I am looking for a good CMS for FrameMaker 11. I already tried componize for Alfresco, but it does not solve our problems. Some important requirements are:

       

      - comfortable editor which can be easily used by authors without XML/DITA/FrameMaker-knowledge

      - creating DITA-imagemaps (CMS editor)

      - creating DITA-templates without special knowledge or using FrameMaker-templates without problems

       

      In componize it was possible to download DITA-maps and open them in FrameMaker. But I don`t know how to format a whole DITA-map in FrameMaker - is it possible? Because it wouldn´t be very comfortable to format every single topic by using an EDD..

       

      Another idea was to import the whole DITA-map to RoboHelp for formatting, but it didn`t work because of a missing DITA Open Toolkit-Folder? I did download DITA Open Toolkit, but I was not able to install it. Why do I need this for RoboHelp and not for FrameMaker?

       

      And for the templates: is there an easy way to create FrameMaker-DITA-templates? I read a lot about EDDs, R/W-rules and DTDs but it seems to be very complicated for non-experts to create all these different documents. And there are less help documents like demonstration videos to learn it on my own.

       

      For me it seems to be like "before you are able to work with RoboHelp-FrameMaker-Templates-Outputs-CMS, learn a lot of programming languages and become an IT-specialist." - so very complicated, not comfortable, not intuitively.

       

      A lot of questions, maybe some of you have some good ideas and solutions! Thanks

        • 1. Re: What is the right CMS for FrameMaker 11 and DITA?
          Jim A Owens Community Member
          Jim A Owens Nov 12, 2013 6:59 AM (in response to NewUser)

          A CMS (content management system) is used for storing, retrieving, and managing files. Some CMS products are specialized for DITA. But they don't usually come with the ability to create and edit maps and topics. For that, you need a DITA editor. FrameMaker is a pretty good DITA editor (especially with the DITA-FMx plugin from Leximation).

           

          DITA maps don't need formatting.  They're simply organized collections of DITA topics. The topics do need formatting in order to deliver outputs.  FrameMaker can format them for print or PDF output, and is exceptionally good for this purpose. It can't directly format DITA for other outputs. For this, FrameMaker and many other products rely on the DITA-OT, which can format DITA for many outputs, such as CHM, Eclipse, or JavaHelp (and also PDF, but without the same power as FrameMaker).  

           

          To format the topics for page output, FrameMaker uses an EDD.  All DITA topics are formatted using the same EDD, and Frame does this "behind the scenes"  so you usually don't have to worry about it (although you can make custom adjustments to the EDD if you want).

           

          If you are using DITA, it's a good idea to install the DITA-OT and get it working with other products. There's a Yahoo group called dita-users where you can get help with this.

           

          As an alternative to the DITA-OT, you might want to look at DITA2Go or DITA4Publishers.