RE: Printing multiple HTML pages at once?

["Glenn Maxey" <glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com>]

Hi Andrea,

This may involve more upfront work than you were anticipating. However,
once you have the process down, it scales really well... both for this
project and any other documentation you want to get online.

In a nutshell, single-source with FrameMaker and Mif2Go (or WWP). FM
gets you your PDF; Mif2Go exports from FM into HTML. The INI files for
Mif2Go allow you to set up Prev/Next links and other fancy things you
might want to set up, such as a hyperlink to the owning PDF. All
cross-references in FM are turned into hyperlinks.

We do this for our online documentation. Each HTML topic has a hyperlink
to the owning PDF file. Printing was the primary reason why we supply
PDF.

The beauty of it is that you can add/move/delete any number of topics in
the source FM and in under 5 minutes have the HTML and PDF. You don't
have to manually take care of prev/next links.

Single-sourcing gets rid of the need for making changes twice. The
information is easier to maintain as a FM document or book. It gives you
a PDF with a better look-and-feel both for use online and printed out.

As an aside, I question writing anything like a Getting Started Guide in
HTML from the onset. My documents are always in great states of flux
when I create them. It would drive me nuts having to maintain manually
the prev/next linking and other hyperlinking details as I
add/move/delete topics. In fact, the details would cause me to lose
sight of the content.

I really like being able to single-source from FM so easily. We have
solid FM templates. I work within those boundaries and write what's
needed. I put in cross-references. Then I push a button to get an HTML
system. The CSS controls further what I get in HTML. However, I admit
that once the CSS has been tweaked based on what comes in from the FM
templates, there is less and less than I have to think about when I
generate HTML. 

IMHO, this is the way, follow ye therefore in it.

Glenn Maxey
Voyant Technologies, Inc.
Tel. +1 303.223.5164
Fax. +1 303.223.5275
glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrea Kelso [mailto:AKelso -at- accelio -dot- com]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 1:59 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Printing multiple HTML pages at once?
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> The main frame has about 25 HTML pages and you can go through them
> sequentially using Next and Previous "buttons" or jump around 
> to specific pages using the Contents pane. 
> 
> One reviewer of the most recent version complained that the 
> document could only be printed one page at a time. 
> ... keep the original the way 
> it is now and have a 2nd version with all of the information in one
long 
> HTML file (or PDF) that the reader can link to and print.
> 
> The second option increases the amount of work to maintain the
document 
> since all changes will need to be done twice. 
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Andrea Kelso
> akelso -at- accelio -dot- com

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