Re: Framemaker Questions

Subject: Re: Framemaker Questions
From: quills -at- airmail -dot- net
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:04:12 -0600

At 12:18 PM -0600 1/14/04, Amy -dot- L -dot- Carlson -at- jci -dot- com wrote:

Hello,

We are making the Word to Framemaker transition, but my group has decided
to go with unstructured Framemaker until we have access to the Enterprise
CMS our company recently acquired. I was/am in charge of template
development. Because we are using unstructured, some people on our team
want genericized headings like Heading 1, Heading 2, etc., etc. instead of
content specific headings like Installation or Mounting. It seems to me
the transition to structured Frame and the development of our DTDs and EDDs
would be easier later on if we used the content specific headings, but
since I am just now learning more about these concepts, I'm not certain.

Also, I noticed that when converting documents from Microsoft Word to
Framemaker, the column headings do not convert as column headings, just as
regular cells. I've asked that we add 1 row to Heading (In the Table
pulldown menu) so Framemaker recognizes it as a true heading. Does anyone
have experience with this?

What is the best way to generate a TOC? Standalone or with the whole
document in a book? Why?

Amy,

Take a class on SGML or XML. You will need it. Second, buy the O'Reilly book, "DocBook". It is the documentation for the software DTD DocBook.

I strenously advocate, though others will argue against it, that you strongly consider using DocBook as your DTD if it is even close to answering your structuring needs.

Some reasons are:

1. It works.
2. Someone else has written it, debugged it, and maintains it.
3. It is fairly widely used.
4. It works.
5. It is already written.
6. It is already fully documented.
7. It works
8. It is already written.

It has two methods of structuring headings, one is much as you listed (heading 1, heading 2, etc.) and the nested headings method which has unlimited possible nestings of headings.

Either way, you will still need generic headings to define styles for your EDD. I found it simpler that way. Fewer things to go wrong.

MS Word tables do not have column headings. They have cells that you can instruct to act like column headings. FrameMaker has always (at least since FrameMaker 3.0) had a table heading row(s). I don't believe that the translation into FrameMaker will recognize these ersatz column heading from Word, or so I have experienced. You might try MIF2Go to translate the files, and see what occurs. I believe the real problem is that Word has no styles associated with tables, only with paragraphs and characters. Oh, and make sure you use the character styles for bold, italicized, and any other special characters or font changes in words or paragraphs that are unlike the normal paragraph.

I like to keep the TOC in a separate file. It is easier to update and if you mix and match chapter positions, it is easier. You could also use a separate file for front matter (Title page, copyright page, acknowledgements, etc.).

I you would like, I can send you a sample of somethings I have done.

Scott




References:
Framemaker Questions: From: Amy . L . Carlson

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