Installing DITA-FMx on Windows Vista and Windows 7

Tips regarding issues regarding the installation and operation of DITA-FMx on the Windows Vista and 7 operating systems.

Windows Vista and 7 have very strict permission requirements for editing files in “non-user” areas of the file system. As of version 1.1.09, DITA-FMx is set up to properly support Windows Vista and 7.

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 to install and set up DITA-FMx. Running the installer, should not require any additional effort. 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. The application and support files are installed in the FrameMaker\DITA-FMx folder.

  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, the user data files (like the ditafmx.ini file) are created in a DITA-FMx folder in the application data area (typically C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\FrameMaker\9\DITA-FMx). Any “global” data files that you create, like filtergroups.ini and ditafmx-bookbuild.ini, that the documentation indicates should be in the FrameMaker/DITA-FMx folder should be created in this location as well.

Once this setup is complete, you will be able to run FrameMaker “normally” (not “As Administrator”). The program and support files are accessed from the “Program Files” area and the user files are accessed from the “App Data” area.