Paragraph and Character styles in FrameMaker and InDesign

[Peter Gold]

One more thing (OK, a couple more)

Now that I'm back on my Windows machine where I can use FrameMaker 8,
I tried my own suggestions using my rusty and trusty MS Word 97, and
learned a few things. Perhaps newer Word releases can understand more
of the information that FrameMaker puts into the RTF, if in fact there
is more. (Anyone who feels like testing this with newer Word releases
can request my test file.)

* There's no Save As > MS Word in FM 7 or FM8, only RTF. I don't have
earlier installed FM, just the faint memory (from FM7 on Mac) of being
able to save as Word. However, saving as RTF and placing the RTF file
in ID retains the FM paragraph and character format names, and many of
FM's paragraph and character font properties, and some typographic and
composition properties - like leading, indents, tab stops, alignment,
hyphenation, space before and after, and even a valiant effort at
frame above and below paragraphs. But missing are FrameMaker's unique
paragraph pagination properties like run-in, across columns, and side
headings, and FM's advanced paragraph property that modifies table
cell margins.

* Opening the RTF file in Word displays bullets and auto-numbers as
question marks in correctly-tagged paragraphs in main text, but the
auto-number format codes (like C:Chapter <$chapnum> <n+>\t) are lost.

* Cross-references are partially converted to text, so you can at
least have a fragment of the referenced content to search for.

* Index markers are broken and leave messes in the form of {xe-"???"}.
The number of question marks varies, but you can search for the marker
locations, create ID index entries there, and delete the broken
markers.

* Footnote references (the number in main text) and footnote content
are retained.

* Table appearance is preserved, but table format names are lost.
Paragraph format names in table cells are retained.

This may be more information than you (or anyone sane) needs. I'm not
not-sane, though I am writing a book on ID for FM users making the
switch (maybe THIS is not sane :) ) and I'd have had to do this
research anyway, sooner or later. I didn't get to this area of detail
in my review of the DTP Tools plug-in in the October/November 2007
issue of InDesign Magazine, because it's not central to evaluating the
plug-in.

The upshot is this: DTP Tools' MIF Filter plug-in for ID is the most
efficient conversion path. For small amounts of content and
formatting, you can save as RTF if it serves your needs, or you can
copy from a conversion using the trial plug-in, and paste into a new
ID document to save it. Otherwise, buy a ticket for some page credits.

HTH

Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

> On 12/12/08, mulholland4 <mulholland4 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>  I am going to be using InDesign to produce some docs and was wondering if
>>  there is any way of importing the Paragraph and Character styles from my
>>  Framemaker 8 docs into InDesign CS4? Although my layout will be radically
>>  different in the new docs, it would be useful to be able to reuse content
>>  from my Frame docs.
>>
>>  Thanks
>>   Mulholland