Can't open XML documents

[Brad Simmons]

Hello again list users,

Well, I've discovered that FrameMaker's help does have instructions on
how to open XML documents in Frame. They are:
Choose File > Open and select the file you want to open.
Do one of the following:
(Windows) Control-click Open.
In the Reading Text File dialog box, select an option for reading the
file and click Read.

But when I try to open a file created in XML, instead of getting the
promised "Reading Text File" dialog box, I get the "Unknown File Type"
box. It then asks me if I want to open the XML file using a whole host
of different applications, (such as PageMaker or Quark) but it does not
give me the option of either HTML or XML. I chose RTF, and all that did
was spit a bunch of the raw XML code on my FrameMaker page.

So, I'm assuming that my FrameMaker application cannot recognize either
HTML or XML. How can I get it to do this? How can I get FrameMaker to
open an XML document?

-Brad

[Inbar, Paul]

Hi Brad,

Switch you interface mode to Structured Framemaker:

File > Preferences > General > Product Interface. You will have to restart Framemaker after this.

Now, if you have FrontPage, there is a preparatory step I would do: Open your html document in FrontPage, click in the code view, put the cursor on the page, right-click, and choose Apply XML Formatting Rules. This will make sure that the HTML is well formatted XML. Save the document.

Open the document in Framemaker. You will get the Unknown File Type dialog. Scroll down until you get to XML. You didn't see that before because you were probably in Unstructured Mode. Select XML, and then click Convert.

You will get an alert: "The file has no XML declaration. Continue to import tagged data?" Click OK.

A Framemaker log will appear, and over it another alert: "Validation of XML file failed. Continue?" Click OK. Your converted document should appear. You can dismiss the log window.

Now, you get a document that has some formatting looks reasonable, even though it's all a variation of Body. I started to write this solution to you yesterday, together with the news that tables at least seemed to remain tables, but then I noticed that in the sample document that I tried this on, not all the data in the tables got transferred. I didn' t have time to investigate why. So I am not sure what I have described above is your answer.

Another, stronger option, one which would take more time and learning but which would yield far better results and is also not an ad hoc way to do things, is to actually prepare a structured application in Framemaker for this purpose, make sure your HTML documents adhear to XML standards, and then import that way. In this manner you could get exactly what you want, with no reformatting necessary.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

Paul


-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+paul.inbar=***@lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces+paul.inbar=***@lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Brad Simmons
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2006 12:23 AM
To: ***@lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Can't open XML documents

Hello again list users,

Well, I've discovered that FrameMaker's help does have instructions on
how to open XML documents in Frame. They are:
Choose File > Open and select the file you want to open.
Do one of the following:
(Windows) Control-click Open.
In the Reading Text File dialog box, select an option for reading the
file and click Read.

But when I try to open a file created in XML, instead of getting the
promised "Reading Text File" dialog box, I get the "Unknown File Type"
box. It then asks me if I want to open the XML file using a whole host
of different applications, (such as PageMaker or Quark) but it does not
give me the option of either HTML or XML. I chose RTF, and all that did
was spit a bunch of the raw XML code on my FrameMaker page.

So, I'm assuming that my FrameMaker application cannot recognize either
HTML or XML. How can I get it to do this? How can I get FrameMaker to
open an XML document?

-Brad
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[Steve Rickaby]

So, I'm assuming that my FrameMaker application cannot recognize either HTML or XML.

It can, but...

How can I get it to do this? How can I get FrameMaker to open an XML document?

*Opening* the tagged document is not the problem: understanding what's in it and moving it into FrameMaker's document space is the issue.

You need to be in structured mode and either:

. Work with HTML or XML that conforms to a known standard (schema), or

. Have a DTD for the tagged files and to set up a structured application based on that DTD.

The former option should work pretty much 'out of the box' in structured mode, as FrameMaker comes ready to work with HTML, XHTML and DocBook. The latter option requires a pretty substantial learning curve and development time, as you need to grok structured Frame and EDD building. If you have a DTD (schema) that describes your XML/HTML files, you can use FrameMaker to create an EDD from it. You need both of these, as well as a FrameMaker template for the target files, and optionally a set of read/write rules, to set up a fully-fledged 'structured application'. (A structured application is not a compiled program, but FrameMaker's terminology for the collection of files that make round-tripping between naive Frame and tagged files.)

Disclaimer: I'm only just getting to grips with this stuff myself, so the true gurus may well pick holes in what I say here. However, I have got to the point where I can round-trip between Frame and XML on a proprietary schema (EDD) with about 95% success.

[Steve Rickaby]

Post by Steve Rickaby
(A structured application is not a compiled program, but FrameMaker's terminology for the collection of files that make round-tripping between naive Frame and tagged files.)

That should of course have read *native* Frame. Although looking at some of my older templates... ;-)

It's early and I have not yet had the intravenous caffeine.