Building document structures
Inside FrameMaker, the EDD controls document structure, just as a DTD or schema controls structure in XML files. There are three ways to create the EDD:
- If you are using a schema, you can convert the schema to a DTD, which can then be imported into FrameMaker to create an EDD
- If you have an existing DTD, you can import the DTD into FrameMaker to create an EDD.
- You can create the EDD inside FrameMaker.
Conversion of schema files into EDDs is not supported in FrameMaker, so if you have a schema file, you will need to convert it to a DTD and then import the DTD into FrameMaker.
Schema files provide much more extensive datatyping than DTDs or EDDs do. For example, you can specify that a Year field must contain only four digits. This close control over content is not possible with DTD or EDD files.
Importing a DTD
If you have a DTD already defined for your document structures, you can open the DTD in FrameMaker and convert it to an EDD. This process usually works fairly well, but there are some limitations:
- FrameMaker does not have a feature equivalent to parameter entities, which allow reuse of structure definitions and attribute lists in the DTD. In the EDD, parameter entities are -converted to plain text.
- If the DTD uses characters not supported in FrameMaker, conversion errors will occur.
Creating structure definitions in FrameMaker
You can create structure definitions in a FrameMaker EDD and then export this EDD as a DTD. FrameMaker permits several constructs in EDDs that are legal in SGML DTDs but not in XML DTDs. The following should not be used in an XML workflow:
- Inclusions
- Exclusions
- Ampersand connector (&)
- Structure definitions that require text and other elements, such as:
<TEXT>,Emphasis
(<TEXT>|Emphasis)*
If you create your structure definitions in FrameMaker, you must keep the XML limitations in mind to ensure that the EDD will export to an XML DTD without errors.
Next page:
Resources and references