Gary Schnabl wrote:
... Writer is not an effective XML tool for
simple usage by writers/editors. For that, one of the big boys like
FrameMaker or (Ann Arbor Michigan's) Arbortext is better...
Although I don't use DITA, it appears that current movement by
writers/editors to adopting XML is heading toward open-sourced DITA and
away from DocBook....
But I digress... I do prefer using the cleaner
functions of OOo that convert well to DOC and avoid using those that do
not. I found out that I could adopt clean (frameless) OOo documents and
convert them to DOC and then to FrameMaker for converting them to
FrameMaker and then to Structured (XML) FrameMaker. There are other
open-sourced applications meant to do that, but FrameMaker's WYSIWYG
interface is quite easy for nonspecialists to work with.
The techniques you've been advocating here are very important for the wider
technical writing community, where people use publishing programs like
FrameMaker (often importing source material from other programs).
I hope you are writing an article or book on this subject. I mean that
quite seriously. I often get questions from techwriters on using OOo with
FM, but as I don't use FM, I can't answer their quesions. As far as I know,
no one has written anything addressing the needs of that specific audience.
--Jean
