Doris... It's important to distinguish between structured Frame and XML. If the source content is stored as XML, when you open those files in Frame, you are authoring in the structured Frame UI. If the source is stored as binary FM files, when you open those files in Frame you're still authoring in the structured Frame UI. In both cases the authoring experience is basically the same, that is, you're inserting elements and setting attributes rather than applying paragraph and character styles. However, with binary FM files, it is still possible to apply paragraph and character styles and have them persist after closing and reopening the file. With XML files, any style tags that are applied while authoring are stripped off when the document is closed.
You say that one writer wants different conditions and paragraph styles. Does that means different elements or just that those elements will have a different appearance for that writer? If you're working in structure (either binary or XML), you should be thinking about elements not styles. Conditions are a different story, since you can apply conditions in both types of files. You might consider using attributes for filtering rather than applying conditions directly. When applying conditions, it's possible to apply them over element boundaries, which can cause all sorts of unintended problems. Using attributes ensures that the filtering happens at the element level. If this writer wants "styles" that don't exist in the other documents, it's likely that this would require additional elements as well. This sounds to me like it would add a significant amount of overhead since that means maintaining multiple EDDs. I would develop an EDD that is a superset of all the types of formatting that will be needed by all groups .. those that don't want to use certain elements or styles would just ignore those items. I'd do the same thing if it wasn't structured. If this writer just wants things to have different formatting, but is OK with using the same elements, that's not a big deal. You can have multiple templates that apply different styles to the same underlying structure. This doesn't affect the common data model that everyone is using. You can all use the same EDD, but develop your own templates. This concept applies equally to the use of binary FM files and XML. I hope that helps. Cheers, ...scott Scott Prentice Leximation, Inc. www.leximation.com +1.415.485.1892 On 9/14/12 1:41 PM, Doris Pavlichek wrote: > Hi all - > > At my company, we are preparing to go from unstructured FM10 to > structured FM10. Because of all of the messages on this board and > generally accepted "best practices", we are doing some clean-up and > preparation now before trying to implement a structure. However, we > have at least one writer (we all report to different managers) who > wants certain conditions and paragraph tags that will then *not* be in > all of the documents. In the past, we have not done this. We all have > the same character and paragraph tags, and conditions, loaded. > > My question is - will there be problems moving to structure and XML > output if we start having this kind of style drift? > > Thanks - D > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.frameusers.com/pipermail/framers/attachments/20120915/5d62eca4/attachment.html>
