🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi:

Here comes a Big Question: I want to produce a reasonably high-quality PDF without using FrameMaker 8's DITA > Build FM DITABook... or Build FM document... tools to "revert" my DITA XML-based topics to FrameMaker binaries.

By "high quality PDF, I mean something that resembles the book-like PDF output -- including such niceties as front matter files (Prefaces, legal boilerplate), TOC, Index -- historically produced by FrameMaker.

What I've done so far

In pursuit of this goal I've:


  * Successfully "connected" FM8 DITA and the FM8 plug-in for the DITA-OT
  and used the demo to verify that basic functionality exists

  * Successfully used the plug-in to generate very simple HTML output from
  my own FrameMaker DITAMAP file that lists three DITA topics files (one each
  concept, task, and reference topic)

  * Searched both this forum, two DITA related Yahoo forums, and Google groups
  looking for a coherent answer

What I don't yet know how to do

Having completed the basics, I'm now hoping to avoid lengthy experimentation and proceed more or less directly to:


  * Constructing the proper sort of DITAMAP file
  * Configuring the FM plug-in to generate PDF output
  * Configuring the DITA-OT to format the PDF pages

I suspect this is a lot to ask for, but looking for existing information is my first step towards solving the problem...

Cheers & thanks,
Riley