Greetings from Utah!
?
Thanks to everybody who so generously responded to my recent query about
FrameMaker EDDs for MIL-STD-38784.? I should have explained my situation more
fully.
?
I am a greenhorn producer of structured documents who works for a small defense
contractor near Hill AFB in Layton, Utah.? In fact, I am still working on my
first structured Air Force TO.? I have some recent experience using?of
FrameMaker 9?for unstructured docs--about two years.? During those two years I
produced several thousand nearly pain-free pages with FM and love it.?
?
Right now we are doing a lot of work on the A-10 and generating some Air Force
TOs in the process.? The company produces Word documents that other contractors
or government people import into SGML.? Recently the Air Force has mandated
that we produce all our new TOs in SGML.? Although we have not yet had our
first TO guidance conference (upcoming in May), we are pretty sure the Air
Force wants us to use 38784STD-BV8a.dtd, 38784STD-BV8a.fos and
38784STD-BV8a.fosi, which are downloadable as a zip file from Wright Patterson
AFB.? We recently purchased one seat of Arbortext editor, which allows us to
deal with the FOSIs.? (The .fos file is the screen?FOSI and the .fosi file is
the paper page FOSI.)? The early results with Arbortext are somewhat
encouraging, and the screen?does in fact resemble the actual manual as we type
things in.
?
Right now we are looking for an econmonical way to use produce printable PDF
files from the SGML.? Things are not looking too rosy with Arbortext.? It looks
like we need to spend a lot more money on software.? We understand Datalogics
Composer does the best job, and can deal with FOSIs and change pages the best.?
However, the price is $50,000?to buy?and $9,000 a year?to maintain it.? The
Arbortext solution is called Print Composer.? It is far less expensive (about
$1,400 a year including maintenance) but using it requires that we tinker with
the print FOSI a great deal to get it to work.? We may even have to write our
own print FOSI.
?
Although I am no expert, it seems to me that FrameMaker is the least expensive
solution.? As I understand it, the Framemaker EDD is?a combination of a FM
template and the DTD.??I think that if we created our own Air Force 38784 EDD,
we would not have?to buy any more software?to produce the printable PDF files.?
Am I correct?? If so, it would be even better if we could find a commercial
version of the Air Force 38784 EDD.
?
Thanks for wading through this and thanks in advance for any replies!?
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