RapidAuthor publication structure

Cortona3D RapidAuthor produces electronic publications with 2D and 3D illustrations and also provides a mechanism to hyperlink elements of these illustrations with the Web-based textual blocks of the publication.

The RapidAuthor publication is a digital document in one of the information standards, such as S1000D or ATA. The structure of publication depends on the specification component associated with the RapidAuthor project. The RapidAuthor publication represents the logically finished element of а technical publication, for example, a data module in terms of S1000D. These elements can be easily combined into a book (the compilation functionality is not included in the RapidAuthor).

There are two types of the RapidAuthor publications:

  • Technical procedure (created with RapidManual)
  • Illustrated parts catalog (created with RapidCatalog)

Table 1 below lists files and folders that constitute RapidAuthor publication, where [SpecID] denotes the identifier of the specification component used for publication. Depending on the specification component that you have chosen, the RapidAuthor publications may include different files and folders.

Table 1. Files and Folders in the RapidAuthor publication
Description File Extensions or Folder Name
Interactivity XML file .interactivity.xml
3D illustration wrl
2D illustration files cgm, jpg, png, tif, and others
Document file in the information standard xml, sgm
IETP (Interactive Electronic Technical Publication) htm
IETP resources subfolder res_[SpecID]
3D illustration resources subfolder res_[3D illustration file name]

The sample structure of the S1000D Issue 4.0 publication is represented in Table 2. The notations in the table are as follows:

  • The square brackets: a variable part of the file of the folder name
  • DM_CODE: data module code
  • INFO_CONTROLNUMBER: illustrations or multimedia objects information control number
Table 2. S1000D Issue 4.0 publication structure
Files or Folders Description
[DM_CODE].interactivity.xml Interactivity companion file. It contains all the needed information on identifiers for hyperlinking and references. This file can be used for the integration of RapidAuthor content into various content management systems.
ICN-[INFO_CONTROLNUMBER_1].wrl 3D illustration in VRML97 file format
res_ICN-[INFO_CONTROLNUMBER_1] Optional subfolder containing resources of 3D illustration (textures, sounds)
ICN-[INFO_CONTROLNUMBER_2].cgm 2D illustration in CGM file format
ICN-[INFO_CONTROLNUMBER_3].jpg 2D illustration in JPG file format
DMC-[DM_CODE].xml S1000D Issue 4.0 data module
[DM_CODE].htm IETP file
res_S1000D4_0_PRC The folder contains the resource files of the IETP. This is a utility folder. The book should contain this folder along with IETP files for all data modules.