FrameMaker/MSWord workflow

[Paul Findon]

On 1 Mar 2007, at 14:04, Studio Smalbro wrote:

> Would anybody have any experience running a workflow with  
> FrameMaker as the typesetting tool and a Word as the tool for the  
> editors? We want to export RTF out of FrameMaker for rewriting and  
> corrections and reimport the updated files into FrameMaker. Is such  
> a workflow possible at all with the tools given?

All of our writer's, editors, and translators use FrameMaker. It  
saves time and money. Some users may moan about the FrameMaker  
learning curve, but then you're only asking them to edit text (you  
said "editors"). Our people are technical anyway, so it was never an  
issue. You may lose the odd x-ref marker, but you can always use  
FrameMaker's brilliant Compare function to see exactly what someone  
has changed. If you use a book and split your manuals into separate  
files, you can easily have several people working on different  
sections simultaneously. That's how we achieve simultaneous  
publication in multiple languages.

I usually find that those involved in manual making are already using  
FrameMaker, anyway.

As to whether you or your company is prepared to buy more copies of  
FrameMaker, that's another issue. In our case, the additional expense  
has provided an excellent ROI over the years.

Paul