How is SnagIT integrated into the Frame interface?
-Gillian
----- Original Message -----
From: Art Campbell
To: Ken Poshedly
Cc: FrameMaker Users List
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 5:29 AM
Subject: Re: best use of graphics in FM
My take on your questions:
1. SnagIt from TechSmith, which is integrated into the FM interface. 15-30
seconds or so if you use automated naming.
2. No, you should take the time to do it right the first time.
3. Quality of the document has a direct relationship both to how customers
view the company and its products, and likely reduces calls for support. And...
the quick and dirty method only works for the current writer. It'd be really
hard for any other writer to maintain or change.
Art Campbell
art.campbell at gmail.com
"... In my opinion, there's nothing in this world beats a '52 Vincent and a
redheaded girl." -- Richard Thompson
No disclaimers apply.
DoD 358
I support www.TheGrotonLine.com, hyperlocal news for Groton MA.
On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 9:59 PM, Ken Poshedly <poshedly at bellsouth.net>
wrote:
FrameMaker 8.0 on a PC with Windows XP Professional
Except for bloated file sizes, in the long run, does it really matter if
you reference graphics or if you embed them inside your publications?
My coworker is a guy who was tech pubs manager at another heavy equipment
company but was convinced by our employer to move south from PA for this job.
He comes for a primarily graphics background, having started a long time ago as
a pen-and-ink tech illustrator. His writing skills are fair at best, but he
considers himself an authority on tech pubs because he had been the manager of
his group. And our company never did fulfill its promises to him if he left his
previous employer.
While we do get along pretty well, we do differ on this aspect of
FrameMaker graphics -- to embed or to reference?
We are the only two tech writers -- with no tech pubs manager -- and we
work in metro Atlanta, Georgia, for a multinational Chinese company in which
the Chinese engineers in Shanghai and elsewhere over there write the original
documentation for heavy machinery in the Chinese language (taking as long as
they want), then send the stuff to a group of kids in their 20s (sorry, but I'm
way past that age) in Shanghai who are not even allowed anywhere near the
machinery but simply translate the stuff as best they can into "Chinglish". The
machinery and their books are then put on ships and my coworker and I are then
told we have two weeks to "Americanize" the Chinglish stuff. That means
reformatting, reorganizing and rewriting the stuff for American heavy equiment
owners.
Thus, we have next to no time to do things correctly. And I've been told
over and over that for the most part, "technical writing" does not exist as a
profession in China and it is simply assigned to anybody and everybody. Their
books look absolutely beautiful and they know how to mimic our page layouts,
but it all breaks down when one tries to use the books to actually operate this
extremely dangerous machinery because the terms, grammar, punctuation, etc.,
are all so inconsistent, incorrect and well, you get the idea. And the U.S.
president of the company is only here in the U.S. for about 4 years and follows
ONLY the Chinese methods. (For one thing, no salary increases; you simply stay
at your starting level or quit. And, by the way, very few if any promotions.
I'm there 3 years and looking to move on.)
Unfortunately, at his prior location, another FM user (more knowledgeable
than my coworker) showed my coworker what I call a "hack" to get a document
done in a fraction of the time that it would ordinarily take. Specifically, he
uses "PrintScreen32" to take screen shots of existing graphics in the Word or
pdf Chinglish books we get from the home office and then pastes them directly
into his FM document. No muss, no fuss -- and no record of any filename or any
other details about any of the graphics in his documents.
He also does this with text blocks (sometimes entire pages) from the
Chinglish books and simply pastes those text blocks into his FM documents. The
results are horrendous because no real editing can be done (and errors in the
original text abound). He simply creates small FrameMaker text blocks over
incorrect words or sentences and types in the few words or sentences needed to
fix something. So his FM documents are pretty much "pictures" of text with
white boxes of corrected words that give his pages that "ransom-letter look".
This method allows him to "complete" a document much faster than doing it
what I call "the right way".
I, on the other hand, have no problem with taking screen shots and saving
them as legitimate graphics with an art control numbers (as listed in an Excel
file created just for this purpose) that can be either referenced or embedded
in other documents. It's true that my method takes a few steps more (thus more
time), but the result is a findable graphics that can be reused over and over.
(I also know how to copy text and properly paste it in an FM document.)
Many of our graphics are used again and again, and many are one-timers.
Plus, embedding pert near 100 or 200 graphics in a document tends to create a
humongous filesize. For instance, a 225-page manual done by my coworker as
described above (that I've had to completely redo correctly with edits
throughout following its technical review) and that has over 200 embedded
graphics and text blocks was about 800 megabytes in size. I routinely get a
warning that there may not be enough computer memory to open the document, but
it does open, taking about 45 seconds or more. He says that it is poor software
and refuses to admit that his way is stupid. The file is smaller since I've
redone it.
So the questions are:
* Does anybody here have a fast way of saving screenshots as legit graphics
for later reuse, and if so, what is your method and how many seconds would you
say it takes?
* Am I being too controlling on this matter? (I suspect yes.)
* If I'm not too controlling in this, are there any other arguments I can
use to bolster my side of the story?
Th-Th-That's all folks!!
-- Kenin Atlanta
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