Re: Advice on systems

[Susan Stewart <susan -at- AVALANCHE -dot- COM>]

Paula Reynolds wrote in asking for advice on what kind of
system to use (starting from Word 5.5). Some of the responses
mentioned the difficulty of getting files into Frame and them
trying to do something with them. A couple of these same folks
suggested looking into conversion vendors.

Paula -- When I stopped to read my mail I was in the middle
of making examples for a set of applications libraries for the
intelligent conversion software that our company makes.

One of the libraries supports conversion from RTF (Word's Rich
Text Format) to MIF (FrameMaker's Maker Interchange Format),
so the conversion is from Word to Frame. You can either
reference a Frame template or describe Frame markup
explicitly. Once converted, the file is a FrameMaker file
and can be edited, formatted, or otherwise manipulated
as can any native Frame file. This isn't a complicated
conversion (I can do it without getting a headache and
I'm not terribly technical).

So, it is possible to get from Word to Frame (if this is
the way you decide to go) without great difficulty or
penalties. The software and libraries I mentioned support
conversion from to and from a variety of formats. If
you'd like to know more, send mail to me directly.

Susan Stewart
susan -at- avalanche -dot- com