Hi Krishnan,

I did manage to preserve the cross-references when converting from the
XML-exported data from Framemaker to my Lyx files. This is probably
harder to do when converting from MIF files, but I'm not sure.

When converting from XML files, you get HTML-like labels like

<A ID="marker-1016441"></A>

and references like

<A href="howto-model1.xml#id(12317)" xml:link="simple" show="replace"
actuate="user" CLASS="XRef">Section 2.1, ”Converting the word
description into an ASCEND model,” on page 7</A>

So it's simple enough to translate those into Lyx references, which is
what the <xsl:template match="[EMAIL PROTECTED]"> and <xsl:template
match="[EMAIL PROTECTED]"> do in the following file:
https://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/svn-view/ascend/documentation/trunk/xml/fm2lyx.xsl?rev=310&view=markup

My big problems here are related to converting framemaker tables to lyx
tables, sticking figures into lyx 'floats' and getting some kind of
line-numbered code listing format. The documents we have references to
specific lines in the code listings, and it's hard to get that to work
correctly in LyX.

Also, the code listing have captions, but Lyx doesn't seem to let you
have a caption unless you're inside a 'float'.

WRT equations, Framemaker's XML export exports equations as images
(GIFs) so a first-pass translation from Framemaker to LyX can simply
embed these images into the LyX file.

Cheers
JP

Krishnan Chittur wrote:

>
> John,
>
> My limited experience is that when there are equations and
> references to sections/chapters and so on - I have not had
> a lot of luck in going from one format to another -
> (my personal preference has been latex/pdflatex and
> tth/hevea or latex2html for html conversion)
>
> I would be happy to attempt some clean-up of latex or even
> lyx documentation - (even the most recent windoze version
> of lyx had some difficulty with some of my latex files -
> need to pursue that angle carefully) (no experience with
> framemaker)
>
> On Wed, 8 Feb 2006, John Pye wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Can anyone offer any comments on what would be the 'safest path' for
>> converting Framemaker files into Docbook Lyx files?
>>
>> I have the exported 'MIF' and 'XML' files from Framemaker version 5.
>> I also have the original .fm5 files, and I have the PDFs that were
>> generated by Framemaker. This is some old user's documentation for a
>> project that I'm working on: the documents have embedded images and
>> equations, multi-page line-numbered code listings, an index, marginal
>> notes, footnotes, and cross-references between sections, tables,
>> equations, etc. Also tabular text, bold, italic and 'typewriter'
>> code. It has 'parts', 'chapters' and then two or three levels of
>> sub-headings.
>>
>> I've already written a hacky XSLT-based transformation from the
>> Framemaker-exported XML files direct to LyX document format using an
>> XSLT transformation, but I found that I just couldn't make LyX do
>> anything sensible with the <lyxtabular> tags that I generated - the
>> lyx format seemed to be so sensitive to whitespace. And I recently
>> received updated original Framemaker files, and I don't want to have
>> to re-do all the hand-tweaking that I did to make this approach work.
>> Also, framemaker's exported XML doesn't seem to contain *all* of the
>> original structure of the framemaker document.
>>
>> If I'm to use existing tools, it seems that mif2xml then a homemade
>> XSLT to transform to HTML, then...?
>>
>> I ultimately want to be able to export docbook and then generate
>> online documentation for GNOME and windows, as well as PDFs, as per
>> http://live.gnome.org/GnomeDocUtilsMigrationHowTo
>> and also Microsoft CHM format
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Compressed_HTML_Help
>>
>> Any suggestions?
>>
>> Would I have more luck trying this with new new 1.4 version?
>>
>> Cheers
>> JP
>>
>> PS the document's I'm trying to transform are actually these:
>> http://ascend.cheme.cmu.edu/pdfhelp.htm
>> for which the source material is at
>> https://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/svn-view/ascend/documentation/trunk/mif/?rev=338
>>
>>
>

-- 
John Pye
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
The University of New South Wales
Sydney  NSW 2052  Australia
t +61 2 9385 5127
f +61 2 9663 1222
mailto:john.pye_AT_student_DOT_unsw.edu.au
http://pye.dyndns.org/

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