How to convert existing FM to DITA 1.2? Any documentation?

Question

I watched a webinar posted on the adobe website called "How to Optimize content for smooth migration into XML/DITA" and in the conversion, it showed an element called dita (root) and elements called topic before the main content. I took a class in DITA authoring last month and we learned about elements such as reference and then refbody and concept and conbody. The class I took did not go into how to use DITA in FrameMaker which is what I need to figure out now.
I'm using FM 10. I have a conversion table that is working pretty well, however, I understand that I need to import an EDD and a template into the files I convert.
My questions are:
What template and EDD file do I use? There are so many of them in the Adobe\AdobeFrameMaker10\Structure\xml\DITA_1.2\app folder. In the DITA folder there are folders for concept, and reference and task that look correct. However, in the DITA_1.2 folder I have no idea where to start.
Is there any documentation for DITA_1.2 for FrameMaker 10? Or books or Help or anything for someone new to using DITA in FrameMaker. I looked at the FM 10 Help for DITA, but it does not really cover when you are converting existing documents, just creating new topics.
Thank you for any information you can provide.
Karene

Answer 1

Hello,
Hoepfully, I understand your questions correctly. Once converted to DITA (regardless of version), each file with have a DOCTYPE. That will be the root element in the file. For example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE task PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Task//EN" "technicalContent/dtd/task.dtd"
In this file, the doctype is <task>. After DOCTYPE you have the public identifier followed by the DTD. FrameMaker uses all this info to determine what template to open the file in, what DTD to parse against, and what read/write rules file to use.
Unlike DITA 1.1, which uses one EDD and template, DITA 1.2 uses multiple template and EDDs. If you open the Application Definition file by selecting StructureTool > Edit Application Definitions, you can find the template, DTD, and r/w rules filesthat are associated with each doctype. For example:
$STRUCTDIR\xml\DITA_1.2\app\technicalContent\dtd\task.dtd
This says, the DTD for doctype <task> is, by default, here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\AdobeFrameMaker10\Structure\xml\DITA_1.2\app\technicalContent\dtd\task.dtd
As for the template, it is here
$STRUCTDIR\xml\DITA_1.2\app\technicalContent\template\task.template.fm
C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\AdobeFrameMaker11\Structure\xml\DITA_1.2\app\technicalContent\template\task.t emplate.fm
You want to get the Structured Application Developers Guide. I am not sure there is one for FM10, but the one for FM9 will work.
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FrameMaker/9.0/StructuredDev/Structure_Dev_Guide.pdf
It's not a quick and easy learning process for developing and EDD. The out-of-the-box EDD does have a lot of formatting covered. It says in the EDD that not everything is covered. For example, I think it only has two levels of bullet <ul> and numbered lists <ol> covered.
As I mentioned FM uses multible EDDs. Each top-level EDD uses several levels of nested EDDs (text insets). It is set up in much the same way as the DTDs. It makes editing the EDDs a time-consuming process.
Hope this helps,
Stan