FDK Clients for Structured Documents

3-day course

FDK Clients for Structured Documents provides information for programmers and system integrators/developers who will design and develop FDK clients for structured documents. It describes those FrameMaker Developer's Kit objects, data structures, and commands specific to structured documents. It also covers the Structure API used to create custom translator API clients that modify the default translation between FrameMaker and XML or SGML.

Prerequisites:

Good working knowledge of the structured FrameMaker authoring environment (provided by Authoring Structured Documents)
Ability to understand and modify a structured FrameMaker template (provided by Formatting Structured Documents)
Familiarity with developing EDDs (provided by Defining Structure: EDDs and Other Tools)
Basic knowledge of XML or SGML concepts and syntax including familiarity with DTDs
Understanding of FrameMaker's default XML and SGML import and export features as well as read/write rules (provided by Importing and Exporting XML and SGML)
Competence in the C programming language, including the ability to work with a library of function calls, manipulate complex data structures, and write C functions
Ability to write Frame Developer's Kit client programs (provided by Developing FDK Client Applications)

Students will complete a number of C language programming exercises in class. Knowledge of the standard C libraries is helpful but not required. Topics include:

Finding and modifying elements and element definitions using the Frame Developer's Kit
Working with selected elements
Adding or deleting elements in a structured document
Working with format rules and format change lists
Customizing the structured FrameMaker user interface
Working with structured books
Customizing the conversion between FrameMaker and XML or SGML
Developing and debugging custom translators for XML or SGML import and export
Understanding FmTranslator, the default translation client
Working with events and conversion objects
Representing XML or SGML attributes as Frame object properties
Reordering element during SGML import/export
Establishing formatting overrides