The document discusses customizing DITA templates in Adobe FrameMaker 2015. It describes how to locate and modify the default DITA templates and element definition document (EDD) to match a company's templates. The presentation covers making minor changes to templates and the EDD, as well as replacing the default templates. It emphasizes testing changes incrementally and having backups. Contact information is provided for following up on the template customization process.

1. Bernard Aschwanden
www.publishingsmarter.com
bernard@publishingsmarter.com
Setting up a Corporate
Template for DITA with
FrameMaker 2015
19:43
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@publishsmarter or @aschwanden4stc

2. Housekeeping and note taking
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 Thanks Adobe! (and the massive number of
attendees!)
 Not all slides or topics are equally weighted
 Use some, discard others
 Slides speed varies (reference) but this is a QUICK
session
 Questions? Ask along the way!
 REMEMBER: Bandwidth matters, close background
apps!
 I’d love to claim errors/typos is on purpose… they

3. About your speaker
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 Publishing Smarter:
President
 Content strategist,
publishing tech expert,
author, and geek-enough
 Certified Technical Trainer
 DITA
 Content management
 Topic-based writing
 Society for Technical
Communication
 Immediate Past President
 STC Associate Fellow

4. Standard disclaimer
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 In the interest of brevity I
will make some blanket
statements to keep it
simple
 Generally things are the
same in 1.2 and 1.3
versions
 It’s not all 100% “the
truth”, but I’ll stay close
 Purists may complain
 And they are wrong!
 (except when they are
right)

5. Slides and demo (alternating)
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Let’s get to it

6. In the next 45-ish (yikes!) minutes
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 FrameMaker (2015 release) uses many DITA templates
including ones for writing topics, concepts, references,
tasks, or maps, and others when publishing
 Learn where these templates are stored and how to
configure them
 See tips and tricks to updating the default templates to
more closely match existing company templates, or even
replace them with your own styles
 Adjust the EDD as needed to further refine the
appearance of output
 This session explores the default templates and ideas
can be recreated using your own templates

7. What I plan to do/show
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 How to quickly tweak the default template
(good for learning DITA and to ID the template)
 How to import the rules to your template
(surprisingly little good comes of this… at first)
 Rework your tags to match what is expected
(mostly easy to do)
 Change references from an EDD to use YOUR tags
(a bit more involved, means “reading” the EDD and
working with insets)
 Change an EDD by adding your own rules
(also involved, but very cool)
 Other options to consider when updating the templates
(not everyone WANTS to do it themselves)

8. Power use required
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 Before you begin:
 You need to have permissions
 Launch FM as an administrator
—OR—change security settings
 Create a backup of ALL files
 EDD
 Templates
 Your content
 Once you start
 Test in an iterative way
 Implement ONE change at a time
 See if you like it

9. Template locations
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 For the author to have a custom setup, you need to
be able to work with the DITA folder. For example:
C:Program Files (x86)Adobe
AdobeFrameMaker2015StructurexmlDITA_1.3
apptechnicalContenttemplate
(similar for 1.2 as well, but the number changes)
 Your path MAY differ a bit, but the important bits
stand out…

10. Basic setup changes
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1. Create a new task/concept/reference, etc and view
the default appearances
2. Open a template and change the zoom
3. Create a new t/c/r and view the defaults
4. Open a template and change view settings

11. The absolute minimum*
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1. You need to open the EDD and your template
2. Then, in YOUR template, import the EDD rules
(File > Import > Element Definitions)
3. Copy in a bit of DITA
 The end, kinda
 You now have all the structure, all the format rules, but...
 If your names and the EDD references don’t match, it’s not
what you need
* Not at all recommended. By anyone. Ever.
If you want super-easy, use defaults.

12. EDD Locations
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 If you want to further define what is in your template,
you need to be able to work with:
C:Program Files
(x86)AdobeAdobeFrameMaker2015Structurexml
DITA_1.3apptechnicalContentedd
(similar for 1.2 as well, but the number changes)
 Your path MAY differ a bit, but the important bits
stand out…

13. Updating an EDD
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 Take the time to explore the file, get to know the
syntax
 Search for specific paragraph or character tag
names
 Tweak to YOUR names (once you have the right
one)
 Import the EDD, test with your files
 NOTE: In this session I am ignoring the messages, but
normally read/resolve *IF* they matter
 Tweak EDD
 In your template, File > Import > Element Definitions
 Create sample DITA content, see if the formats “stick”

14. Changes with minimal EDD work
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1. Create a representative sample of your content in
DITA
2. Open your template and insert (copy/paste) DITA
3. Import the EDD (previous slide)
4. Edit the appearance (very carefully) using
Designers
 For example: Rename/match tags (Bulleted/ul.bulleted)
 Note that some content may have EDD based “first/last/only”
rules
 Could have other rules that may have unexpected impacts
5. Delete the content, save the template
6. Open DITA content and see the format change
7. Repeat as needed

15. Changes with a bit more EDD work
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1. In the EDD, find the “right” place to change
(for example, need to update the <title> for section,
etc.)
2. Make a silly change, such as assigning a table title
(test if you got it right)
3. Import, see the impact
4. Correct the tag you assigned with the “right” one
5. Repeat as needed

16. Changes with a bunch of EDD work
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1. In the EDD, find the “right” place to change
(for example, need to ADD a rule for <shortdesc>)
2. Add a brand new rule with a silly change, such as
assigning a table title (again, test if you got it right)
3. Import, see the impact
4. Correct the tag you assigned with the “right” one
5. Repeat as needed

17. When ready, and with extreme caution
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 Ensure you have backups
 Double check that you have backups
 Get OTHER people to validate that you have
backups
 Replace the default Adobe templates with your own
 Match the path, match the names
 Test
 Test
 Test

18. Publishing paths
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 Author templates and publish templates are in
different locations
 Consider:
 Authors may want to have a template that shows draft-
comments, or uses conditions, or even has watermarks for
PDF
 Publishing may want to have templates that don’t
 StructurexmlDITAoutputTemplates
Your path MAY differ a bit, but the important bits
stand out...

19. Further (geeky) reading
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 http://help.adobe.com/en_US/framemaker/dita/
framemaker_customization.pdf
 http://help.adobe.com/en_US/framemaker/2015/ini/
framemaker_2015_ini_reference.pdf

20. One other option
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 Use these ideas
 Build a custom structured application
 Point to custom folder locations
 Structure Tools > Structured Application Designer
 Still need to have custom templates

21. Blatant self-promotional plug
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22. Follow up contact information
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905 833 8448 (Eastern Time)
bernard@publishingsmarter.com
www.linkedin.com/in/bernardaschwanden
@publishsmarter or @aschwanden4stc
www.publishingsmarter.com