| VANCOUVER, B.C. -- July 18, 2006 -- XMetaL, the
global leader in XML content creation and collaboration solutions,
and Mekon Ltd, UK's leading DITA and XML content solutions consultancy
organization today announced the release of an open source FrameMaker
Adapter for the DITA Open Toolkit. Mekon and XMetaL collaborated
on the development of the FrameMaker Adapter, which plugs into the
DITA Open Toolkit, to allow Adobe FrameMaker to be used as a print
rendering engine for DITA content created in XML editors.
The FrameMaker Adapter provides organizations that
rely on FrameMaker for PDF output the ability to choose from a variety
of authoring tools for creating DITA content, while preserving their
investment in FrameMaker templates and style sheets. This allows
them to take advantage of the advanced capabilities of the DITA
Open Toolkit for processing DITA content, such as map merging and
transformations into assorted output formats.
Moldflow Corporation, an XMetaL customer and the world's
leading producer of CAE and optimization software for the injection-molding
industry, contributed to the development of the FrameMaker Adapter
and is using it along with XMetaL Author DITA Edition to publish
product documentation. "The FrameMaker Adapter enabled an efficient
transition from our legacy FrameMaker publishing system to a topic-oriented
system based on DITA," said Tim Lake, director, Technology Transfer.
"We've been able to preserve the appearance and quality of our printed
documentation while making our publishing processes significantly
more responsive to increasing customer and market needs."
DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture,
is an OASIS standard for information development that is rapidly
being adopted as the preferred approach for producing technical
and other structured documentation. The DITA Open Toolkit (OT) is
an open source implementation of the DITA specification, and includes
processing capabilities which can render DITA content to various
output formats, including XSL-FO to PDF, HTML, and various forms
of User Assistance. The FrameMaker Adapter, one of the first products
to take advantage of the new plug-in architecture of the Open Toolkit,
adds FrameMaker to this list of formats.
According to Don Day, chair of the DITA Technical
Committee, "This tool makes best use of the DITA OT processing architecture
to process a DITA map into a FrameMaker stream that can be printed
directly through the FrameMaker print engine, which is an excellent
way to make use of the FrameMaker assets that a company may already
have."
The FrameMaker Adapter includes a FrameMaker XML Application
that provides all the necessary components for importing and printing
the content produced by the Adapter, including an Element Definition
Document (EDD), read/write rules, and example styles and templates.
Existing FrameMaker templates can be converted to use the XML Application
by simply renaming styles to match the style names defined in the
Application. The XML Application can also be extended using standard
FrameMaker features while maintaining compatibility with the content
produced by the Adapter.
Comtech Services used the FrameMaker Adapter to publish
their new book on DITA, "Introduction to DITA: A User Guide to the
Darwin Information Typing Architecture". "The FrameMaker Adapter
allowed us to self-publish the book, which is almost 300 pages,
at low cost while meeting tight deadlines," said JoAnn Hackos, president
ofComtech Services and a world renowned expert in information technologies.
"The Adapter has certainly demonstrated its ability to handle large
print publishing projects."
Working with FrameMaker and XMetaL users around Europe,
Mekon has the expertise and interest to contribute to the FrameMaker
Adapter. "Many of our clients have invested in developing FrameMaker
assets for years, both internally and through Mekon Services," said
Julian Murfitt, managing director, Mekon UK Ltd. "We believe the
Adapter will be a major contributor to the adoption of DITA while
maximizing return on investment and maintaining solution scalability."
"We have many customers that are switching from FrameMaker
to XMetaL Author DITA Edition," said Bruce Sharpe, general manager
of XMetaL. "Our tight integration with the DITA Open Toolkit allows
customers to continue their use of FrameMaker to produce print output,
while taking advantage of DITA technology."
The FrameMaker Adapter can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=132728
It is freely available under the same open-source
license as the DITA Open Toolkit.
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