Hi all, I normally would never contradict Jeremy or Dov, but I don't think it's fair to say that PDF is designed to create manuals only for printing. In the olden days, yes, but not now.
We provide all our docs in PDF to our customers, but we designed our manuals to be used primarily on line. We include links and other features to help users find and display information quickly. We're working on adding GUI walk-throughs using Captivate, and adding 3D animated graphics using Captivate and FM as well. But I agree with Jeremy on the FM to Word issue. We actually tried that with some of our docs because the enginering division in Japan does not have FM yet (sometime this year, hopefully). Yes, we could convert the docs with mif2go, but it's a real hassle to do the conversion, get their updates in word, update the FM docs, and then convert the updated docs back to Word again. It is just not a productive way to get edits. We finally got them to accept PDFs and use the reviewing capabilities to make comments and edits. It's what the tools were designed to do and it works. However, the above process does not work for info on new features, especially when they include drawings and/or screenshots. For that, they still send us Word docs because Word is currently the tool they have. Diane Gaskill Hitachi Data Systems ========================== -----Original Message----- From: framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com]on Behalf Of Jeremy H. Griffith Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 7:06 PM To: framers@lists.frameusers.com Cc: charlene_glo...@emainc.com Subject: Re: PDF to Word Conversion On Mon, 9 Feb 2009 10:28:13 -0500, <charlene_glo...@emainc.com> wrote: > I have been working on a manual for a while now, the manual is >projected to be over 2000 pages to include, photographs, autocad >drawings and diagrams. My client decided Friday that he now wants the >entire document in word. As everyone else has said, this is a very, very, very Bad Idea. Word is simply not stable enough to use for docs that size, let alone the fact that it lacks so many common Frame features that you will spend much of your editing time gritting your teeth to avoid screaming... Ask him *why* he wants it in Word? If it's because he wants to edit using Word's Track Changes, fine, you can give him a Word copy, made with Mif2Go, any time he wants one. (Make one Word file per chapter, *not* one file of the whole book.) Then he can edit, send it back, and you can make his changes into proper writing when you edit them into the Frame version. Many of our customers use that workflow, and it works well. >Is there anyway I could convert it to word, >that will not be time consuming, or does anyone know any software that >will convert a pdf to word and retain all formatting, graphics, etc. I >tried saving the pdf as a word document, but a lot of the formatting was >off. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Going via PDF is another Bad Idea, because PDF is, as Dov said, a "final format", designed for print. It is *not* an interchange format. Frame's native RTF export leaves a lot behind. Mif2Go does too, since there is nowhere to put a lot of Frame information in Word, but what does get there is complete, accurate, and looks remarkably like the Frame document it came from. You can try the free demo at: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm and see for yourself if it will work for you. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. <jer...@omsys.com> http://www.omsys.com/ _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as dgcal...@earthlink.net. Send list messages to fram...@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/dgcaller%40earthlink.net Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to fram...@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
