Framemaker 8 FDK Developer Kit: Download from Adobe
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…
