Surbhi, I would try it without creating R/W rules and see how it turns out. Your basic elements and attributes should be fine, but some of your objects (graphics, etc.) may require them. The R/W rules section in the Structured Applications developers guide explains the default behavior of elements, attributes, graphics, etc. If that doesn't meet your needs, you might need R/W rules. (In some cases, even r/w rules won't work and you'll need to use XSLT or a custom FDK client. The last requires C programming.
XML is plain text. It's like HTML with custom tags. Browsers know what to do with HTML tags, but they don't know what to do with your custom tags. To get bulleted lists, or other formatting, you'll probably need to use XSLT to transform the XML into HTML/XHTML, It might be possible to do it with CSS, depending upon the browser, and the complexity of your XML. For XML within FrameMaker, you can map your structured Frame elements to paragraph and character styles in a FM template. Let's say each item in a bulleted list is wrapped in a 'List' element. In your EDD, you would map the 'List' element to the 'ListBullet' paragraph style. Copying the list so others can reply as well. Mike _____ From: Surbhi Singhal [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 12:17 PM To: Mike Feimster Subject: Re: structured doc ---> xml yes. i myself made my EDD. So i wil generate the DTD from the EDD itself. does that mean i can get away with Read/Write rules?? regarding formatting part, i am talking about the formatting info once the fm doc gets converted to XML. I used lists in my edd and when i convert them to XML, they are rendered as plain text. I need help on this part. I have both FM 7.1 and FM 7.2 available at work. Please help. Regards Surbhi On 6/7/06, Mike Feimster <mike.feimster at acstechnologies.com> wrote: <snip> i want to convert my structured document to xml. I have with me 1) EDD 2) sample document are read/write rules necessary?? </snip> Maybe. Depends on how closely you're EDD and DTD match. If you generate your DTD from your EDD, you might be able to get away with the default R/W rules. If your DTD is different from your EDD, you will almost definitely need R/W rules (Although, with FM 7.2, you might be able to use the built-in XSL processor instead). <snip> Do i need XSLT for the formatting part? if yes, can anyone suggest some links for the same. </snip> Depends. Generally people use XSLT to format the XML, but you can also use cascading style sheets. Depends what browser you are using (assuming this is for display on the Web) and if you only want to format the text. If you want to "transform" the text to html or something else, you will most likely want to use XSLT, although I suppose you could use Perl, or something like that. If you are talking about formatting within FrameMaker itself, then your EDD and possibly a FM template would contain the formatting information. www.w3schools.com is a good site to help you get started with XSLT. http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/index.html has some great information, but it helps to know a little XSL before jumping in. Several list members also offer XSL training. Personally, I bought a book and worked my way through it. Mike
