Built FM DITABook (made FM binaries) -- how do I get back to XML?

Question

For FrameMaker 8 DITA.
I gen'ed apparently "clean" binaries from DITA XML -- now how do I gen "clean" DITA XML from the binaries?
BACKGROUND
I created a bunch of DITA topic files as .xml, then assembled them in a DITA map file.
Next, I used
Build FM DITABook from DITA map file to export those XML files as a binary (or if you prefer, "classic") FrameMaker book containing a list of ".xml.fm" binary (a.k.a. "classic chapter") files.
I then proceeded to edit those binary files, closely conforming to DITA tag structure to create a FrameMaker book and constituent binary topic files that validated and gen'ed without error.
Finally, I used
Save As to save those .fm chapter files as XML. (Actually, FM8 for some reason wants to export them as ".xml.xml" files...)
THE PROBLEM
When I save the .fm files as XML, FrameMaker reports an error the essence of which is "Root element different from DOCTYPE".
FrameMaker also reports the same error if I open a given .xml file then Save the file back into itself.
If I then re-open the file that contained the error, FrameMaker does not report an error. That is to say that it seems that Open-ing and Save-ing the XML file "cleans" the error out of the file.
So, is there any way to go directly to "clean" XML without performing the intermediate Open/Save operation?
Cheers & thanks,
Riley

Answer 1

Hello Mr. Van ****,
you might try the following:
Rather than having the topics in XML, combining them into a map and turning the map into FM, you could have a book with chapters (=structured .fm-files) and insert the XML topics by conref
This is analogue to using text insets in non-structured files.
The advantage of this is having the topics as .xml (=validation, granularity, reuse) and an FM book (=generated lists a.s.o) at the same time.
If you need to be on the pure xml path, you might try out the "DITA-Services" of SYSTEC. This is a plugin pack that
* adds static or dynamic files to a book according to a configuration file
* sets variable values, text condition visibility status and PDF metadata information according to a configuration file
* localizes formats, reference pages a.s.o semi-automatically.
This way you could go from xml + map>FM-Book without Title, TOC a.s.o>FM-Book with Title, TOC and all other bells and whistles >PDF.
Feel free to inquire at [email protected]
With kind regards,
Franz.
[SYSTEC - the document processing company.]
http://www.systec-gmbh.com/sites/toolbox.php
http://www.systec-gmbh.com/sites/ditapack.php
http://www.systec-gmbh.com/sites/3dpack.php
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