XMetaL and S1000D

[PCB Rob]

Hi,
I'm a new user of XMetaL Author Enterprise (version 5.5) and need to work with some S1000D-compliant data modules. I'm working with Issue 3.0 of the S1000D spec.

Any ideas or tips on how to work with data modules in XMetaL?

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[Derek Read]

We don't have a customization for this, so at the moment there are basically 3 real options:

1) Build a customization for the S1000D DTDs yourself.
2) Contract our professional Services dept to do #1.
3) Talk to a company called Koala Publishing in the UK. I believe they have an S1000D solution for XMetaL (and possibly other editors).

Depending on how much work was done for #1 or 2 you would have something somewhere between basic editing (akin to what the “Journalist” demo gives you minus all the macros) and a full blown solution (akin to the DITA authoring solution we ship with XMetaL Author Enterprise).

The minimum is to provide XMetaL Author Essential or Enterprise with a copy of the DTD you wish to work with (it will then autogenerate the necessary CSS and CTM files it needs to render the document). At this point you would be working with the Element List and Attribute Inspector almost entirely, though the Enter key and some other basic behaviors would be enabled. You could then take those files and tweak them to better suit your requirements and optionally add additional behaviors (macros).

Note that at the moment our products are unable to work with the Issue 4 XSDs due to lack of support for some specific Schema keywords they use. We plan to have addressed that for our next major release (6.0). The product can handle the Issue 3 and previous DTDs.

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[Su-Laine Yeo]

Update: In XMetaL 6.0. Schema  statements are supported, so S1000D Issue 4.0 can be used with XMetaL Author.

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