Where are customized element lists stored ?

Question

Hi all,
After removing lots of useless DITA elements from my Elements list via the Customized List option, I find that the list is only used for the document in which I have edited it, and is not kept when I close and reopen the DITA file.
In the FM10 help file I read that the customized list applies to a document - or possibly to a set of documents in a book that were selected when opening the Customized List option. In DITA topics, there is no use for an FM book file, so this documented option is pretty useless for those types of structured files.
Does anyone know where the customized elements list is stored ? Can it be copied and pasted into other documents ? Is there an easy method to make it valid for all (new and existing) documents of the same DITA type ?
Thanks
Jang

Answer 1

Hi Scott,
I understand what you're saying. However, I do not want to change anything to the underlying DTDs, EDDs or read-write rules. I just want to hide a number of elements in FrameMaker without changing anything else. This effectively implements one aspect of constraints (the other aspects, namely making optional elements mandatory or defining an order where this is not given by the original DTDs, are not possible without using the method you indicate.
At first I was happy with the simple notion of editing the visibility of elements in the editor. This is a feature that several XML editors have also implemented. But in FM, any change to the elements catalog is lost as soon as the file is closed, and that makes this feature really useless. Noboby is going to go through the same stupid process of selecting all those wanted elements or deselecting the unwanted ones every time a file is opened again.
Michael pointed me in the right direction to solve this problem the easy way: after defining the custom elements catalog in a DITA file and removing all elements from it, I saved the file as an FM file, renamed it to topic.template.fm and placed it in the DITA templates folder (effectively overwriting the old file - but of course I renamed the old one first). Now, whenever I open a topic type file, the custom elements catalog is read from the template. This is done for all DITA files of the topic type, not just the newly created ones.
This is exactly what I would expect as FM's default behavior, so I am happy that it works. Takes some of the geek stuff out of DITA in FM.
Ciao
Jang