Learning curve for FrameMaker

[Peter Gold]

> FrameMaker isn't very intuitive and consists of many layers (body
> pages, master pages, and reference pages, for instance) to make even
> the simplest document function.

Word isn't intuitive either. No software is. "Familiar" is a more accurate term.

If you've developed running headers and footers, different headers and
footers for first-page, left-pages, and right-pages, references to
bookmarks (cross-references in FM),  tables of contents, indexes,
paragraph and character styles (formats in FM), tables,
self-maintaining numbered lists using field codes, hidden text
(conditional text in FM), footnotes, in Word, to adjust best in
FrameMaker, think of these tasks and features as descriptions of what
you want to do, and what you want to see in the finished document on
screen, PDF, or paper, rather than think of how you do them in Word.
Then, check for the descriptive terms in the online Help and
definitely get the FM 7 book recommended on this thread.

One major difference between Word and FM is the use of multiple
individual files to create a "book" project. Unless Word has changed
recently, it uses the fragile and unreliable Master Document approach,
which concatenates all sub-documents in to a single one. A FrameMaker
book is a list of names of the component files and instructions on how
to process them - continue or restart page and list numbering in each
file, etc. (Interestingly, Word for DOS, and early Word for
Windows/Mac versions, used a similar technique - field codes in a
"container" document that referred to the independent component files
without concatenating them, and provided processing instructions.
Sometime after Word moved to the Master Document, this was dropped.

Regards,

Peter
_______________________________
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices