🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi Riley...

Really .. why would you want to do this when you've got all of the PDF power in FM? :)

- Constructing the proper sort of DITAMAP file:

FM only supports DITA 1.0 at this point .. DITA 1.1 is where the new cool "bookmap" book-specific elements were added. You could use DITA 1.1 to build your bookmap file (outside of FM) .. or you could set up your Map application to support DITA 1.1 (this can be done, with a little work). However, in general, you don't necessarily need the elements provided by bookmap to build a PDF book using the OT. The issue of getting the ditamap set up properly (to use bookmap and DITA 1.1) is, however, not the biggest problem that you'll run into. For now, I'd just use a simple map that you're able to make in FM now, and move on to your other bullet points.

- Configuring the FM plug-in to generate PDF output

You first need to configure the OT to generate PDF output. This is actually fairly simple. You basically just need to install an FO processor (Apache FOP is free, there are others available as well that cost $$). You should be able to follow the instructions in the OT to get this working, but if you run into trouble your best source for help is the dita-users Yahoo list. The key being that you must get it working from the command line before trying to hook up FM to the OT. Once it is working from the command line, you'll just need to add PDF as a target for the FM OT plugin. In the ditafm.ini file ..

FrameMaker8\fminit\ditafm\ditafm.ini

add "pdf" as a target in the BuildFile section .. it will look something like this ..

[BuildFile]
AntCommand=ant
AntScript=ditafm-ant.xml
Count=3
DitaDir=C:\Tools\DITA\DITA-OT1.3.1
1=chm
2=html
3=pdf

Then in the ditafm-ant.xml file, add the "pdf" target just below the "chm" target ..

<target name="pdf" description="build the pdf output" depends="init.project">
<mkdir dir="${project.output.dir}${file.separator}pdf"/>
<antcall target="dita2pdf">
<param name="args.input" value="${project.dir}${file.separator}${project.ditamap}"/>
<param name="output.dir" value="${project.output.dir}${file.separator}pdf"/>
</antcall>
</target>

This *should* allow you to build a PDF from FM.

- Configuring the DITA-OT to format the PDF pages

This is the hardest part (and hopefully the part that will convince you that it's much better to build your PDFs from FM directly). Basically, you either need to learn XSL-FO development, or pay someone lots of money to do the XSL-FO development for you. There are some minor tweaks that you can do fairly easily, but to get anything that you'll consider a serious "book" will take some serious effort and/or expense. To get answers to specific questions on this, you'll need to post to the dita-users Yahoo list.

Cheers!

...scott