Structured Framemaker, FDK and XML Blog

MadCap Software, the leader in multi-channel content authoring and a showcase company for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft XPS, today announced that Swinburne University has adopted MadCap Flare 3.0 for its post-graduate technical communications program.

One of the few times I’ve been tempted by an Apple product since the Apple II was the arrival of the iPhone, because it brings an unparalleled web browsing experience to the handheld device. (I can’t be bothered by the mobile web– I want the real web, on the move with me.) The Safari browser for the Mac runs on the iPhone, delivering the experience I’m used to from the desktop, only smaller and smoother. 95% of the time, it’s just perfect.

The good news, then, is that a mobile port of Firefox is in the offing. I can even post to my blog from it, when it gets here. I’m terribly curious to see what it’s like, and what kinds of devices it runs on. If it runs on something available for Verizon, I can even stick to the wireless company I like, while getting the services I actually need.

More at:

http://mashable.com/2007/10/10/firefox-mobile/

The Framemaker 8/FDK developer kit is now available for download from the Adobe.com web site.

(Interestingly, it looks like the FDK structure import/export programmer’s guide hasn’t been updated.)

The available downloads include:

• FDK 8.0 Windows installer file (ZIP, 14MB)
• FDK 8.0 Unix installer file (TAR, 15MB)
• What’s New in the FrameMaker 8 FDK (PDF, 441 KB)
• FDK 7.0 Structure Import/Export Programmer’s Guide (PDF, 2.4M)

System requirements

FDK for Windows:

• Intel Pentium III
• Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Vista
• 512MB of RAM
• 37MB of available hard-disk space

FDK for Unix:

• Solaris 8, 9, or 10
• 512MB of RAM
• 256-512MB of swap space
• 37MB of available hard-disk space
• X Window System X11R6

The What’s New document is definitely worth a read. It looks like the big gotchas are around Unicode handling. FDK functions now support a Unicode mode in which they behave rather differently from the older mode… Dialog boxes are handled in Dialog Encodings that also introduce compatibility issues.

Adobe has tried to support compatibility for FDK clients from Framemaker 7.2, 7.1, 7.0 without recompilation. I’m curious to hear from anyone who’s encountered difficulties.

There are also issues with compiler support for anything older than Visual Studio 2005. My favorite quote, after somecode  changes they recommend to work with older compilers, was:

IMPORTANT: Although these fixes resolve linker issues, the behavior under these fixes is unpredictable, and we strongly recommend using Visual C++ 2005.

“It links without errors” isn’t exactly the most reassuring promise. Looks like it’s time to get a new compiler…

As I suggested, read the documentation. It's very easy to understand and
the concept is extremely powerful.
But as it was more than 10 years since he last FrameMaker work, I wanted
to try it again:
Heading1 Autonumber Format=n:<A+>-
Equation Autonumber Format=n:Eq <A>-<n+>< >
Figure Autonumber Format=n:fig <A>-< ><n+>

As I suggested, read the documentation. It's very easy to understand and
the concept is extremely powerful.
But as it was more than 10 years since he last FrameMaker work, I wanted
to try it again:
Heading1 Autonumber Format=n:<A+>-
Equation Autonumber Format=n:Eq <A>-<n+>< >
Figure Autonumber Format=n:fig <A>-< ><n+>

"andreas" <andreas a@t mrs d.t ch> a écrit dans le message de news:
473f6b3f$0$3816$54022...@news. sunrise.ch...
Excuse-me, for B, I want to have also B
In paragraph B, I want to come back to 1,2, 3 for "Eq" and also for "fig"
and I want to recall the number of the paragraph...
Thanks to read this strange but practical question