Hi Dominick, I would look at both products with the assumption that your documentation is already structured. In other words, the process of converting to structure will not last forever, so you want to find out which product works best for you once everything is structured. Once you determine which product meets your needs for working with structured documents, then you can figure out the best way to migrate from unstructured FrameMaker to the structured product.
I don't have any experience with Epic Editor, but I can tell you that structured FrameMaker works well. If your authors are used to working with unstructured FrameMaker, it should be a smooth transition to working with structured FrameMaker. As far as conversion from unstructured to structured FrameMaker, there are some good tools built into FrameMaker to do this. Rick Quatro Carmen Publishing 585-659-8267 www.frameexpert.com We are still trying to decide which direction to take toward structuring our document collection. About two months ago, I posed a question to FrameUsers requesting opinions on the best approach for migrating to structure and received much valuable feedback. I have been researching the possibility of using a company that provides training coupled with consulting. Consulting and training are multi-leveled, depending on the price tag. Due to financial constraints, I am ambivalent about committing to a tack that may not enable us to become self-sufficient. However, I am still open to it. In my search for the best approach, Arbortext's Epic Editor came up as a possible solution. Epic seems fairly robust, but I would like feedback on "real life" experiences/opinions from anyone who has used Epic to migrate Frame documents to structure. I am interested in hearing about your experiences with the product as well as support issues--Frame issues. I am also interested in experiences with the more traditional Frame-to-structure, training/consulting companies. ...opinions and experiences, good or bad. Thank you, Dominick Dominick A. DeFlorio Senior Technical Writer Plug Power, Inc. 968 Albany-Shaker Road Latham, NY 12110 (518) 738-0389
