Need Help Automating FrameMaker Processes

[Bill Briggs]

>>>Is there a more automated way to create PDFs from 53 FrameMaker
>>>books? Or is there a quicker way to set up this process from
>>>FrameMaker? Are there any programs that could help automate these
>>>processes? Do your companies hold any best practices that we could
>>>benefit from?
>>
>>I know people are probably tired of hearing this, but... Yes this can be done, but painlessly, but only on a Mac.

 Rick has already addressed this, but FrameScript on either platform can do it.


>> Using AppleScript, it is possible to automate this. I just checked FM 7's AppleScript dictionary and I was surprised at how many things were scriptable.

 Everything in the application's object model is scriptable. But it's not all rosy in the AppleScript and FrameMaker world. There are some bugs in the AppleScript implementation that are truly annoying. And with the arrival of FrameMaker 7 there was a tendency for the application to bail on perfectly good code and say that it encountered an error. It would run the code sometimes, then just give up on it another. This required a quit and restart of FrameMaker. Version 5.5.6 and version 6 were not subject to this inexplicable failing with AppleScripts. I'd go on with the list of AppleScript shortcomings, but Adobe isn't going to fix them, so it's a waste of electrons. Bugs and irritants notwithstanding, it's possible to do really amazing things with FrameMaker and AppleScript.


>>One of the things Apple has never been good at doing is promoting AppleScript, but it is still one of the best ways to automate many tasks because it can be used to automate and move data between several products.

 This is certainly AppleScript's great strength.

 - web