Adobe 65030365 Developer's Guide - Page 29

2 Structure application development The starting point: an EDD or DTD Your end users need a starting point that describes the structure of documents they'll create or edit. You provide this starting point either with a DTD or a FrameMaker EDD. If you start with a DTD, FrameMaker can create portions of a corresponding EDD for you. Similarly, if you start with an EDD, FrameMaker can create a DTD for you. If a starting point has not yet been established, you can create your own DTD or EDD. In this situation, we recommend you to start by using FrameMaker's tools for creating an EDD (described in Part II of this manual) and then create a DTD from that EDD. Translation between DTDs and EDDs FrameMaker can automatically translate a DTD or EDD. If you start with a DTD, the software creates a default version of the corresponding EDD. Similarly, if you start with an EDD, FrameMaker creates a default version of the DTD. Once your application is complete, your end users use standard commands to save individual FrameMaker documents as markup documents or to open individual markup documents in FrameMaker. In either case, the structure application works transparently with FrameMaker, making these automatic translations possible. Formatting information in FrameMaker You create a structured template to provide appropriate formatting for your documents. Properly speaking, a DTD does not provide any formatting information. With XML, formatting information is provided via CSS or XSL. When reading XML, FrameMaker does not use any of this formatting information. When reading markup data, FrameMaker combines any formatting that is defined in the document template with any formatting rules that are specified in the EDD. To vary the formatting of your documents, you may create more than one structured template for the same DTD. For example, your end users can use the same markup data for different purposes, such as a fully designed catalog and a brief parts list. They may want the same data formatted differently in these two situations. Changing the default translation The structure of markup data varies widely, and that can affect the way it maps to FrameMaker document objects. As a result, much of your job in creating a structure application is to change the default translation FrameMaker uses. You do so by providing information the software needs to recognize and process particular constructs. If FrameMaker automatically translates all the components of a document just as you want, you don't need to provide this extra information. One of the differences between markup data and FrameMaker is that has explicit representations for items such as tables or graphics. With XML or SGML, an individual DTD defines a arbitrary representations for tables and graphics. For this reason, the default translation in FrameMaker assume certain DTD representations of these items. For Structure Application Developer's Guide 11