RE: Word to Framemaker

Subject: RE: Word to Framemaker
From: "Fred Ridder" <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com>
To: royj -at- alltel -dot- net, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:54:09 -0500

The first point I would make is that the "WordPad-like text" is
the *real* content of your document. Everything else is really
just presentation, and is either background items (things like
logos, titles, and dates that appear in the headers and footers
for page after page), content that is derived programmatically
from the *real* content (TOC, running headers/footers that
are derived from headings, index, the text portion of cross-
references), and purely presentational content that is
generated by the tool itself (page numbers, autonumbering,
autotext, bullets). Word basically munges all of these into
a single layer (particularly in Print Layout view), while
FrameMaker separates the real content from the formatting
layer (the paragraph and character format catalogs), from
the background layer (master pages), and from the derived
and system-generated content (system variables, generated
files. (A structured authoring environment using XML or SGML
goes even farther in separating content from formatting and
presentation, but that's another whole discussion...)

In our group's migration from Word to FrameMaker, I was
responsible for converting dozens and dozens of documents,
totalling >10K pages, and in my experience the key to success
was leaving behind as much of the Word-specific presentational
features as possible. Headers and footers were already
pre-built in my FrameMaker templates. Autonumbering and
bullets and autotext for notes and cautions were pre-built
in my FrameMaker templates, so I wrote Word macros to strip
all that formatting out of the Word docs. In FrameMaker we
were going to insert graphics by reference, so there was no
point in trying to convert the in-line graphics in the Word
docs; a macro got rid of them pre-conversion. In FrameMaker
we were going to use a file-per-chapter model rather than
our mnolithic Word docs, so cross-references were inevitably
going to get broken; another Word macro converted all x-refs
to plain text and marked them with a named character format
so that we could find them and reconstruct them post-
conversion. Index entry fields in the text came across just
fine (I don't know why the are not doing so for you); all I
had to do after conversion was add the generated file to
the FrameMaker book and click the Update Book button.
ToC, LoF, and LoT were similarly trivial to rebuild after
conversion using pre-formatted templates; it took less
than 10 minutes per book to completely reconstruct all
the generated files. The slowest part of the conversion
and clean-up was dealing with tables, since Word and
FrameMaker have fundamentally different underlying models.
But Rick Quatro's wonderful TableCleaner plug-in takes a lot
of the pain out of with some really intelligent global
operations.

My opinions only; I don;t speak for Intel.
Fred Ridder
Intel
Parsippany, NJ


From: "Kirk Turner" <royj -at- alltel -dot- net>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Subject: Word to Framemaker Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 08:03:45 -0500

I am converting a large, complex manual from Word to Framemaker 7.2. The
manual has a TOC, numerous subsections, footnotes, headers, and running
headings. It is about 460 pages. I have read TechKnowledge Corp's online
article about this conversion, but found that after I eliminated all the
page breaks, TOC, headers, and footers, what remained looked much like a
WordPad text. It would take me a week to redo all those elements.

Is there a third-party plug-in that isn't ridiculously expensive or a method
whereby I may retain the elements of the Word DOC?

Now that the day shift is in, I thought some of you might know.

I don't think that you can get there from here, but maybe some of you know
the way.

Best regards,
Kirk Turner

_________________________________________________________________
Turn searches into helpful donations. Make your search count. http://click4thecause.live.com/search/charity/default.aspx?source=hmemtagline_donation&FORM=WLMTAG

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word features support for every major Help format plus PDF, HTML and more. Flexible, precise, and efficient content delivery. Try it today! http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l

Create HTML or Microsoft Word content and convert to Help file formats or printed documentation. Features include single source authoring, team authoring,
Web-based technology, and PDF output. http://www.DocToHelp.com/TechwrlList

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- infoinfocus -dot- com -dot-
To unsubscribe send a blank email to techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40infoinfocus.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.


References:
Word to Framemaker: From: Kirk Turner

Previous by Author: RE: RoboHelp 6
Next by Author: RE: Techie's List
Previous by Thread: Re: Word to Framemaker
Next by Thread: RE: RoboHelp images and bullet points


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads