--- Pat Christenson <pxenson at comcast.net> wrote: > I have a large project coming up that involves > converting unstructured > FrameMaker docs to structured FrameMaker (7.1 on > Windows). Does anyone > know of any helpful websites or documentation to get > through this as > quickly and efficiently as possible? ======================================== First, you have to closely examine the target document set. Were they all created with the same version of the same template. If not, the conversion cost is likely to escalate exponentially as a function of the amount of difference in the templates.
Second, did the authors adhere to the template, with minimal format overrides, and consistent application of the designated format for each level of structure. If not, conversion cost will go way up. Third, are there major instances where unstructured tags are used at many different levels of structure. This will result in a one-to-many relationship for a given tag (i.e., the same tag must be converted to more than one structural element). If this is the case, conversion is much more difficult and costly. If the document set passes these tests, it is unlikely that the structure inferrable from the tags will closely match the structure defined by the target EDD/DTD. In that case, it is advisable to perform the conversion table operation by creating an "interim" EDD which closely matches the tagging of the unstructured docs, with element names matching the corresponding tags in the target EDD/DTD. Once the conversion using the "interim" EDD is completed, you import into those converted documents the FrameMaker template file for the target EDD. The resulting document will now be full of structure errors which you correct (mainly) by wrapping elements of the "interim" EDD in higher-level elements defined in the target EDD.