Newbie Needs Help

[michael.johnson]

Hi Folks,

I work for a small government contractor near HillAir Force Base,Utah. We have to generate TOs for the mechanical solutions we develop for various aircraft. Until recently we generated Word and unstructured FrameMaker docs. Now the government wants SGML docs written to 38784STD-Bv8a, which is the DTD the government has developed and supplies from their TMSS website.

We recently purchased Arbortext Editor release 6.0 (Pine). I got it installed on one PC, and have gone through the editor tutorial. Now I am trying to figure out how to get the editor to work with the DTD.

I have no structured authoring experience and don't know what to do next. Is there anybody out there who can point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance,

Mike Johnson

[GregoryMackenzi]

Hi Mike,



You need to obtain the DTD you plan to use and install it to your
"Custom folder". The DTD(s) should go in their own folder for clarity.
There will actually probably be more than one. Under 4.3 I needed to
"compile each DTD" for use with the editor. That way when I select
File/New I can add the DTDs I compile to the list of DTDs. If you were
to try to create a document under file/new you'd already see a bunch of
DTDs there, doctypes.



I don't use 6 or the DTD your going to be using so others here may have
more specific things to say about it. Instructions on the custom folder,
and compiling from within the Editor, are found in the help files. The
trickiest part I found at first was figuring out what the top level tag
(element) of a DTD should be. That is written in the DTD itself, which
you can look at with a text editor, sometimes they put it in comments or
S1000D for example has a dtd called "pm.dtd", and the top level element
is , so the top level tag is "pm".



I hope this points you in the right direction.



Greg

J

[michael.johnson]

Thanks for the reply. Version 6 doesn't have a custom folder as far as I can tell

[asbona]

Mike:



The custom folder should be located at: c:\Program Files\PTC\Arbortext
Editor if you have it installed locally on your PC. If Arbortext Editor
is installed on your network, you'll need to locate the drive where it
is installed and locate the ..\Program Files\PTC\Arbortext Editor
folder.



Hope this helps.



Andrea



Andrea J. Sbona

Director of Training

TerraXML, Inc.

asbona@terraxml.com <">mailto:asbona@terraxml.com>

781-330-1057

[steve.thompson4]

Couple of things Greg didn't happen to include...

First, it's usually simplest to name the folder (subfolder of 'custom/doctypes') for each doctype with its DTD name. Last place I worked, your 38784STD-Bv8a would be in a folder with that exact name, and its the DTD file would be '38784STD-Bv8a.dtd'. It's root element is 'doc' (if memory serves).

Secondly, the 'catalog' file in the custom/doctypes folder will need an entry with the path to that DTD and the public id used to point to it. That will enable Editor to find that DTD when it's referenced in the SGML being loaded.

Today's $.02.

Steve Thompson

[ClayHelberg]

Hi Mike--



Give your newness to Arbortext, I think some formal training would be a
very wise investment. PTC offers some pretty good training courses to
get you started using and configuring Arbortext. Getting training will
save you a lot of time and effort versus trying to figure it out on your
own.



Also, for what it's worth, Arbortext 6.0 does allow use of a custom
directory. In Arbortext, select Help->Help Center from the menus. In the
Help Center, search for "custom directory", and you will find
information on the structure of the custom directory, and how to
configure Arbortext to use it.



--Clay





Clay Helberg

Senior Consultant

TerraXML

[GarethOakes]

+1 to what Clay says.



You can purchase an Arbortext eLearning subscription (1 year) that will give
you access to all the Arbortext stuff on PTCU. It is not terribly expensive
either. That will give you more than enough information to get rolling with
Arbortext 6.0.



// Gareth Oakes

// Chief Architect

// GPSL (www.gpslsolutions.com)

[michael.johnson]

Hey Everybody,

Thanks!

Mike Johnson