Adobe 65030083 Reviewer's Guide - Page 29

Improve Efficiency Through Scripting Automation All components of the Adobe Technical Communication Suite 4 software provide batch processing, scripting, and/or automation capabilities. Scripting can automate manual or tedious tasks and can greatly improve the efficiency of technical communication workflows. Using Adobe ExtendScript All components of Adobe Technical Communication Suite 4 support ExtendScript, a scripting language that provides task automation and access to nearly all component objects. This allows you to adjust the process to support your own specific business requirements. The automation and scripting capabilities in Adobe Technical Communication Suite 4 provide rich capabilities for automating and customizing the conversion process. The capabilities of ExtendScript include: • Access to the application data model. • Ability to traverse topics by tokens, tags, formats, and styles. • Access to and ability to manipulate source files. • Access to and control of single-source layouts, variables, snippets, conditional build tags, and other objects and properties. • Ability to take action based on FrameMaker markers. • Ability to invoke and control other ExtendScript-enabled Adobe applications, including Illustrator and Photoshop CS6, for automated image manipulation, resizing, or conversion. • Ability to Multiscreen and pass control between Adobe Technical Communication Suite 4 applications. Adobe Technical Communication Suite 4 also includes the Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit. This is a full-featured development environment for ExtendScript. You can edit scripts, view variable and object values, set breakpoints, and run scripts line-by-line for testing and debugging purposes. You can also invoke scripts from the Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit. FrameMaker FDK and Third Party Plug-in support Although the FrameMaker 11 data model is exposed through Adobe Extendscript, developers can still customize and automate FrameMaker with the FrameMaker Developer's Kit (FDK). The FDK is a set of C libraries and header files that nearly completely expose the FrameMaker object model. With the FDK, developers can create freely-distributable plug-ins to customize the FrameMaker environment and automate FrameMaker tasks. The FDK is available from Adobe at http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/FrameMaker/devcenter.html. Adobe Technical Communication Suite Reviewer's Guide 29 July 10, 2012