Re: DITA: going from FrameMaker to oXygen

Subject: Re: DITA: going from FrameMaker to oXygen
From: Mark Giffin <mgiffin -at- earthlink -dot- net>
To: Rebecca Officer <Rebecca -dot- Officer -at- alliedtelesis -dot- co -dot- nz>, "techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2018 21:23:30 -0800

Hi Rebecca,

I'm interested in the reasons you or your department decided to change from Framemaker to Oxygen. Just curious.

I've used both Framemaker and Oxygen with DITA and I personally prefer Oxygen, but I'm sure some people prefer the way Framemaker does things. As for converting the DITA files from Framemaker, it should work pretty well if you're using XML as the source format and not binary Framemaker files. I assume you're not using a DITA CCMS like Ixiasoft, easyDITA, etc.

For doing things like change bars in the editor, Fm probably uses XML "processing instructions" (PIs) to accomplish the change bars. These will be proprietary to Fm since they are not part of the DITA standard. But Oxygen also uses their own PIs to make change bars, and there is probably a way to write a conversion script to change from Fm PIs to Oxygen PIs. The same is probably true of Fm cross references and other stuff.

One major difference between Fm and Oxygen is ease of customized PDF output. It's probably a lot easier to make a nice-looking PDF in Fm than in Oxygen. Oxygen's PDF output uses the DITA Open Toolkit and you must deal with the OT to change the way your PDF looks. If you have customized your PDF output in Fm, it will not help you in Oxygen, you will have to start over.

Does your department use a centralized server to publish PDFs? (As opposed to each writer generating their own PDFs.) If you do, you are probably using Framemaker Server, which costs about 9000 USD last I checked. No need for extra software or fees if you're using the DITA OT on a server.

Making HTML-based output (like a webhelp system, or plain HTML files, etc) will be different with Oxygen also (DITA OT again). There are various ways to do HTML-based output from Fm, so it's hard to say what you will run into.

Mark Giffin
Mark Giffin Consulting, Inc.
http://www.markgiffin.com/

On 09-Dec-18 6:44 PM, Rebecca Officer wrote:

Hi David

Weâve been authoring DITA in Frame for a few years now, so our contentâs very structured. Weâve got thousands of topics and weâve tried not to take advantage of Frameâs latitude. We do have some Frame-specific processes, like we use status settings and change bars during our pre-publication reviews, and we use Frame cross-references. Weâre still testing oXygen but we think itâll have a way to achieve the same goals.

I guess Iâm wondering what Frame folks whoâve moved to oXygen think about oXygen â what Frame features they really miss, what oXygen features they love, and any âyou really need to know thisâ kind of info.

Cheers
Rebecca


From: David Artman <David -at- DavidArtman -dot- com>
Sent: Monday, 10 December 2018 2:50 PM
To: Rebecca Officer <Rebecca -dot- Officer -at- alliedtelesis -dot- co -dot- nz>
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: DITA: going from FrameMaker to oXygen

How structured is your source?
FM allows a lot of latitude.
[DCA:d.a.d.]
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References:
DITA: going from FrameMaker to oXygen: From: Rebecca Officer
Re: DITA: going from FrameMaker to oXygen: From: David Artman
RE: DITA: going from FrameMaker to oXygen: From: Rebecca Officer

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