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> Subject: advice for single-sourcing ( Framemaker + Webworks)
> I have collected some information from a WWP manual, a few
> whitepapers form
> Scriptorium. But if some of you have interesting stories to share or point
> me to additional resources, we would feel more confident.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Valerie
>
I don't have any additional resources that I can point you to, but I can
offer some tips. In my last position at Daleen, we used Frame and Webworks
to produce print and HTML-based help from the same set of Frame files, and
we also used conditional text to produce documents for more than one
platform.
The trickiest part of single-sourcing using Frame and Webworks will be
managing your conditional tags. If possible, stick to just using two; life
gets very complicated when you have to manage three or more.
When applying conditional tags, you may want to consider applying them to a
whole paragraph rather than individual words or phrases inside a paragraph,
This seems like more work, but makes edits much easier as well as making it
easier to find your conditional text inside a document.
When you generate your help, remember to set your conditional text settings
across the entire book, then regenerate the book, before you build the help
in WebWorks. It's an easy thing to forget.
We used a chapter- number sequence for our figures and tables (e.g., Table
3-1). I never did figure out how to get WebWorks to remove the numbering
completely, so I created a separate template that I applied before
generating the help. This removed all numbering from captions and cross
references. It was easier to do this than try to figure out regular
expressions in the WebWorks macros. I know that you can manage all this with
just WebWorks - I just never had the time to figure it out.
Of course, you need to consider the differences between print and online
documents when you are writing and applying your conditional tags. There's a
lot of material that typically goes into a print docuement that you may not
want in the online help (installation instructions, for example).
I've had to do single-sourcing with FrameMaker and RoboHelp and believe me,
it's a lot easier with WebWorks.
Regards
Keith
--
Keith Soltys
keith -at- soltys -dot- ca
Host of "Internet Resources for Technical Communicators" since 1994
Now at http://www.soltys.ca/techcomm.html
Out of work and looking for a job or contract in Toronto.
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