Novell documentation teams use the structured version of FrameMaker as their basic authoring tool. Our implementation of FrameMaker, called DocSys (formerly NovDocX), uses a subset of the industry-standard DocBook DTD so that documentation we create is compatible with other authoring tools.
DocSys makes these industry-standard elements available to FrameMaker by listing them in an Element Definition Document (EDD), which is embedded in the template. The EDD contains both structural rules for the document (the document type definition or DTD) and styling rules, which dictate how elements of a specific type are displayed. The EDD also contains customized elements to automate and extend the basic functionality of the DTD.
The Novell EDD, combined with a set of utilities and scripts, creates what we call the DocSys tool set. This tool set is leveraged throughout the documentation development process, documentation localization process, and documentation production process, resulting in significant time and cost savings to Novell. For example, we can use a single source for PDF, HTML, text, and various Help outputs, and we can also use the same single source to customize the content for each output that we produce.
This section lists the DocSys elements in alphabetical order, and gives a brief description of each. It includes both DocBook elements and custom elements added specifically for Novell.
No indication is given about whether an element is required or whether more than one can be used at a given level, because those relationships can change depending on the presence or absence of other elements.
Many of these elements are automatically inserted when you insert an element that has additional required elements. For example, the SubToc element creates an itemized list and automatically populates it with the names of all of the next-level headings. When a FrameMaker document is exported to XML, these Frame-specific elements are deleted, but the DocBook elements are left in place. This enables us to exchange documents with writing groups that use DocBook but don’t use Frame.