Installing DITA-FMx on Windows Vista

Tips regarding issues around installing and running DITA-FMx on the Windows Vista operating system.

Windows Vista has very strict permission requirements for editing files in “non-user” areas of the file system. DITA-FMx is not currently set up to properly support Vista. Until it is, you’ll need to jump through a few hoops to get things set up and working properly. (The same restrictions appear to apply to Windows 7 as well.)

This topic describes installation steps that may vary slightly from the standard installation. The steps in this topic do not replace those in the standard documentation. It is important to complete all of the required installation steps.

First, you must be an Administrator (or an Administrator will need to modify these things so that you can work with DITA-FMx and FrameMaker).

Running the installer, should not require any special effort (other than requiring Administrator privileges). Modifying the maker.ini file to disable the default DITA support can be tricky. To edit the maker.ini file:

1. On the Start menu, right-click the Notepad application and select “Run as Administrator”
2. In Notepad, choose File > Open then locate and select the maker.ini file.
3. Comment out the default DITA clients (as instructed in the documentation), and save the file.

After running the installer, you will need to extract and install the structure application files.

1. In the FrameMaker\DITA-FMx folder, right click the DITA-FMx-1.1_apps.zip file, then choose Extract All.
2. In the Extract Compressed Folders window, enter the path to the structure directory (something like “FrameMaker\Structure\xml”, the actual path will vary), and choose Extract.

When you run FrameMaker, it must be run “as administrator.” To do this you can right click the application icon and select “Run as Administrator” (but you must remember to do this every time you run Frame). Or, you can modify the application icon to do this for you (recommended).

1. Right-click the application icon and select Properties.
2. On the Compatibility tab, select Run this program as an administrator.
3. Choose OK.

Now, you can run FrameMaker and set up the structure applications (you've already extracted them to the proper location)