Framemaker to Apple's Pages

[Paul Findon]

On 14 Dec 2005, at 13:22, Steve Rickaby wrote:

>> How can I migrate Framemaker documents to Apple's word processor 
>> Pages? Of course I want to keep as much structure as possible, in 
>> other words, RTF is not really an option (or is it?). Someone must 
>> have written about this before, a link to a web page describing such 
>> a migration would be perfect.
>
> David - if Paul Findon doesn't reply here, try posting to the 
> 'FrameMaker for OS X' group, as I believe he's looked at Pages in some 
> detail.

Thanks, Steve. By the way, the FrameMaker for Mac OS X petition is 
almost at 3,300 signatories.
<http://www.petitiononline.com/fmforosx/petition.html>

I did a detailed comparison with Pages 1.0 and it shows real promise. 
The real-time page updating while resizing or moving objects on a page 
is really cool - something even InDesign can't do.
<http://www.infopage.net/fmforosx/fmcompared.html>

However, it is only version one and I think software generally reaches 
a maturity at around version three, so I wouldn't use it for serious 
work. Having said that, Apple may release Pages 2.0 at the upcoming San 
Francisco Macworld Expo in January as part of the iWork '06 package and 
that may have the additional functionality to make it a more viable 
alternative to FrameMaker.

Apple is still using FrameMaker 6.0 in the Classic environment to 
produce its own user guides and I'm curious as to what they will use in 
the future. It does seem ironic that with all that super-cool 
technology even Apple is still replying on Mac OS 9 to produce its user 
guides. Then again, we do and some Adobe employees do, too. The latter, 
by the way, are just as miffed with Adobe's decision to discontinue Mac 
FrameMaker as we are. But there you go.

Getting back to the question, I've not tried this, but I think RTF is 
the only way to go. As far as I know, DTP Tools is the only company 
with a FrameMaker-to-another app converter and that's for QuarkXPress. 
I had heard they were to produce a FrameMaker-to-InDesign converter but 
never... hang on. Just checked their Web site and they say is will be 
available this year, with "100% Conversion of InDesign supported 
features. Smart interpretation of the unsuported ones."
<http://www.dtptools.com/product.asp?id=mfid>

Paul