Further to Matt's comments, I do conversion for clients, but usually 1000's of
pages at a time, and sometimes it's Word, Frame, or
sloppy Frame source content. In almost all cases we look for patterns. If they
can be id'd then we are sitting pretty. Regardless of
how good or bad the content is,
BTW, with a system in place we converted 5,000 pages of legacy content that
was in good shape to DITA in under a day.
Just one question, who is we, meaning how many and what experience did all
the we have with XML, DITA and Frame?
As a lone writer with no XML, DITA or structured Frame
The we in this case is a company we. So it was me. And one part time resource
who did a few hours of work on things I didn't want
to work with. A lot of review or fixes to content the client had flagged as a
possible concern. In this specific case the content
was a collection of references for
Just yesterday I dove again into the Frame 7.2 structure folder, looked at
all of the files - DTD, EDD, MOD, etc. Started reading the XML cookbook, and
you know what? It's just not worth it to me as a solo writer.
Copy and paste is easy and free (unless you're on a 3G iPhone...), and if
the
The question isn't/wasn't whether or not to structure...that decision is
based on (among other things):
-number of authors
-level of reuse
-need to enforce content model
-need to pass content between one organizational group and another
If the powers that be decide there is an ROI to structure,
Having converted tens of thousands of pages, my opinion is that there is no
entirely simple, painless and quick way to transition. Some of the things that
other responses have mentioned can make the process simpl*er* and quick*er* but
I doubt there will ever be a
Hi all,
I'm running FM 7.2p158 on Windows XP SP2 with the FM hotfix installed.
I've inherited a document that was originally formated for print output (6.5
X 9 inches) but now only ships as PDF. As such, I'm reducing the page count
by moving to US Letter size and increasing the column sizes and
Matt-
People are asking why it's so hard to convert. My point is that for many
solo writers, it's hard to propose a conversion to management, and get
buy-in, especially when there's doc to write that's currently being
delivered just fine in their eyes.
To successfully convert unstructured
Jill, I had a similar problem when I was reformatting a document in FM9.
My monitor is 24 wide, and I had my Files Preferences set to 24 for the
monitor size.
It turned out that the text looked too far from the right margin only when my
page magnification was greater than 100. At 100, and
Thanks for all the offers to help but the winning solution was that when
viewing the docs at magnifications greater than 100% on a big monitor, the
wrapping looked off. Setting it to 100% showed that all is right with the
world.
Thank you very much.
On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 4:22 PM, Joanne Tait
One quick note...
The EDD/DTD, many of the XSL tools for output (to PDF/HTML/Help) and training
on using the tools (Frame) for DITA are mostly done.
There is an EDD and a default environment included in FrameMaker (and a lot of
other DITA specific tools) already. The XSL is
included for most
Hi Ed,
I think you have too many experts in your list. Many of us learned the steps
as novices. For example,
An expert to create an EDD and/or DTD.
You can learn to create an EDD by reading the FrameMaker documentation. If
you are going to use DITA, FrameMaker comes with an EDD that you can
Albeit, we did it with a two-person team and in small chunks, but we didn't
have an expert for almost any of the process (except taking an introduction
course with Bernard so we could hit the ground speed walking).
We use FM9, which has its own DTD and EDD for DITA. We've learned on our own
I'm coming from this formerly working in a department of 30 writers that
converted from unstructured Frame to structured using a content management
system. It was a full department effort because 'they' didn't want to hire
(pay) any consultants. Perhaps we went about it wrong, but it was what it
On Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:15:17 -0400, Ed hamonwr...@hotmail.com wrote:
I went to an XSL class and was completely lost. Maybe it's changed since
then, but XSL spooked me pretty well. I enjoy hacking XML and CSS, so maybe
I'll look at this incrementally.
You aren't the only one who finds XSLT
Source control?
On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 9:52 AM, LaBarre, Susan
susan.laba...@its.nc.gov wrote:
The variables were there a couple of days ago on the numbering tab of
Paragraph Designer. I've shut down and restarted more than once.
Anyone else experiencing this issue? Is this another one of
Further to Matt's comments, I do conversion for clients, but usually 1000's of
pages at a time, and sometimes it's Word, Frame, or
sloppy Frame source content. In almost all cases we look for patterns. If they
can be id'd then we are sitting pretty. Regardless of
how good or bad the content is,
>> BTW, with a system in place we converted 5,000 pages of legacy content that
>> was in good shape to DITA in under a day.
Just one question, who is "we", meaning how many and what experience did all
the "we" have with XML, DITA and Frame?
As a lone writer with no XML, DITA or structured
The "we" in this case is a company we. So it was me. And one part time resource
who did a few hours of work on things I didn't want
to work with. A lot of review or fixes to content the client had flagged as a
possible concern. In this specific case the content
was a collection of references for
Just yesterday I dove again into the Frame 7.2 structure folder, looked at
all of the files - DTD, EDD, MOD, etc. Started reading the XML cookbook, and
you know what? It's just not worth it to me as a solo writer.
Copy and paste is easy and free (unless you're on a 3G iPhone...), and if
the
The question isn't/wasn't whether or not to structure...that decision is
based on (among other things):
-number of authors
-level of reuse
-need to enforce content model
-need to pass content between one organizational group and another
If the powers that be decide there is an ROI to structure,
Having converted tens of thousands of pages, my opinion is that there is no
entirely simple, painless and quick way to transition. Some of the things that
other responses have mentioned can make the process simpl*er* and quick*er* but
I doubt there will ever be a
Hi all,
I'm running FM 7.2p158 on Windows XP SP2 with the FM hotfix installed.
I've inherited a document that was originally formated for print output (6.5
X 9 inches) but now only ships as PDF. As such, I'm reducing the page count
by moving to US Letter size and increasing the column sizes and
Matt-
People are asking why it's so hard to convert. My point is that for many
solo writers, it's hard to propose a conversion to management, and get
buy-in, especially when there's doc to write that's currently being
delivered just fine in their eyes.
To successfully convert unstructured
Jill, I had a similar "problem" when I was reformatting a document in FM9.
My monitor is 24" wide, and I had my Files > Preferences set to 24" for the
monitor size.
It turned out that the text looked too far from the right margin only when my
page magnification was greater than 100. At 100,
Thanks for all the offers to help but the winning solution was that when
viewing the docs at magnifications greater than 100% on a big monitor, the
wrapping looked off. Setting it to 100% showed that all is right with the
world.
Thank you very much.
On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 4:22 PM, Joanne Tait
One quick note...
The EDD/DTD, many of the XSL tools for output (to PDF/HTML/Help) and training
on using the tools (Frame) for DITA are mostly done.
There is an EDD and a default environment included in FrameMaker (and a lot of
other DITA specific tools) already. The XSL is
included for most
Hi Ed,
I think you have too many experts in your list. Many of us learned the steps
as novices. For example,
>An expert to create an EDD and/or DTD.
You can learn to create an EDD by reading the FrameMaker documentation. If
you are going to use DITA, FrameMaker comes with an EDD that you can
Albeit, we did it with a two-person team and in small chunks, but we didn't
have an expert for almost any of the process (except taking an introduction
course with Bernard so we could hit the ground speed walking).
We use FM9, which has its own DTD and EDD for DITA. We've learned on our own
I'm coming from this formerly working in a department of 30 writers that
converted from unstructured Frame to structured using a content management
system. It was a full department effort because 'they' didn't want to hire
(pay) any consultants. Perhaps we went about it wrong, but it was what it
On Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:15:17 -0400, "Ed" wrote:
>I went to an XSL class and was completely lost. Maybe it's changed since
>then, but XSL spooked me pretty well. I enjoy hacking XML and CSS, so maybe
>I'll look at this incrementally.
You aren't the only one who finds XSLT challenging! I've
been
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