Rebranding/OEM'ing Frame files

[Grant Hogarth]

That's basically what I do here.
In addition, I: 

1. Make sure that any screen captures are either generic in the first
place 
   (watch those file trees!) or are "cleaned up" before you ship them to
your OEM. 
2. Include a generated list of images for reference.
3. For maintainance releases, include a doc that lists all changes.
   (I created 2 markers: "ChangeText" & "Change Image", insert them
(with description text) 
    and then generate a doc that lists these. I include the bug number
if there is one, 
    mostly for my own use.)
4. Include a doc that lists all changes to paratypes, chartypes, etc.,
including context tags.
5. Mark all these additional docs "NOT FOR PUBLICATION" in the header (I
use 14 pt Comic Sans (Bold, Magenta)) 


Grant


-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+grant.hogarth=reuters.com at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+grant.hogarth=reuters.com at lists.frameusers.com]
On Behalf Of Deb Hardy
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 12:23 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Rebranding/OEM'ing Frame files

I originally posted this question on Friday, but it didn't go through.
(Switching to plain text now!) Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Deb Hardy <edittur at yahoo.com> wrote:
For those of you who distribute your source files to OEM partners, would
you be willing to share the basics of how you prepare your Frame files
for rebranding? I think our rebranding efforts are going to be very
simple, but I want to go into this feeling confident that I've picked
the best approach.
I would be extremely grateful if any of you who have successfully
created re-brandable Frame files could share some wisdom. Here's what
I'm thinking so far:

* For company name (and product names, if it becomes necessary), we'll
create a user variable.

* For the corporate logo that appears on our cover page and in our
running footers, we'll give our file a generic name like "corp_logo.gif"
and instruct the OEM partners to replace this file with their own
similarly sized corporate logo.

Do both of these approaches seem reasonable and optimal? I'm
particularly concerned about the logo-replacement issue. I'm pretty sure
that images and anchored frames can't have user variables attached to
them, so I'm sort of perplexed about any other option besides replacing
the existing logo. It seems like there should be a better way than
overwriting our file... Am I missing something obvious? Is there a good
argument for using conditional text for this problem? I'm hesitant to
add more conditional-text tags to our book, but I will happily do it if
it turns out to be the best solution.
 
I've Googled my little heart out searching for OEM/rebranding best
practices, especially in terms of FrameMaker capabilities, and I'm
coming up short.
Thanks so much in advance for any advice you can offer!

-deb h.