How does working with structured Frame differ from regular Frame? (LONG)

[quills at airmail.net]

The answer is many fold, but you should first understand that anytime 
you place visual formatting or organization on a document you have 
established the basic elements of structuring.

With no expertise or knowledge of structured language, it would be 
cheaper, faster, and easier for you to have someone knowledgable 
create your DTD and train your staff. The good news is that if all 
your people are required to do is implement structured format on 
documents, then your effort is much less. Your people will only need 
to learn the interface and how to apply formatting, and the rules of 
application. Just like you require them to now know the interface of 
unstructured FrameMaker and understand your style rules.

Since I have never used footnotes, I can't answer as to the 
flexibility of structured footnotes.

The basic thing is that you structure the content, then apply the EDD 
to format it for publishing. It's much easier to change your 
formatting once the DTD and structure is in place.

The real question is why do your superiors think they need to go 
structured? Doing so means that the authors will have to have 
structure imposed upon them, they won't have the luxury of freeform.

Also understand that your DTD must reflect your needs. Structuring 
content means that you are identifying the relationship of the data 
to each other. A hierarchy of importance and relationships. Think of 
an outline, that's the basic thing you gain from structured 
FrameMaker, a standardized way of describing the hierarchy of content 
in relationship to other data.

Scott

At 3:07 PM -0500 12/15/08, Wendy McGovern wrote:
>Fellow Framers:
>
>
>
>Now, the question: What will we have to do differently from the way we
>produce a book in regular Frame today in order to make it XML if we went
>to structured Frame? I have seen people on this list ask questions that
>involve EDDs and DTDs, and, as an English and art major, would rather
>throw myself under a bus than to have to work with computer
>programming-looking stuff like that. (No offense to all you techies out
>there in STC land.)
>
>
>
>Is structured Frame flexible enough to allow for extremely UNstructured
>content like we get from lawyers where we have a multiauthor book and
>one person has structured their chapter one way and others structure it
>another way, and because of the legal content, it CAN'T be made
>consistent because that's the way the statutes are? And does it allow
>for manual workarounds like we do when we get footnotes that take up 6
>inches of a page and we must manually break things to keep the footnotes
>with their references in the text?
>
>
>
>What level of brainpower is needed for a worker to use structured Frame?
>It's hard enough as it is to find people who can pick up Frame itself
>with a level of competence we need (especially at the salaries we give
>them as a nonprofit). What would a general salary range be for someone
>to be a desktop publisher/typesetter working with structured Frame?
>
>
>
>With structured Frame, do you typeset a Frame book and then do something
>with the EDD/ DTD stuff, or do you have to plan the book with the
>structural elements from the beginning, and how much extra time does all
>that other stuff take to do to make it XML?
>
>
>
>Am I overreacting, and is structured Frame not as much of a horror as I
>think it's going to be? I'm not quite sure why PDFs, which have been
>perfectly fine for our electronic publishing to date, are not seen as an
>adequate delivery medium for the future,
>
>
>
>Whew! Anyone willing to take a stab at convincing me we need to go with
>structure in the future?
>
>
>
>Wendy McGovern
>Publications Editor
>Pennsylvania Bar Institute
>5080 Ritter Road
>Mechanicsburg, PA 17055-6903
>1-800-932-4637, ext. 2257
>wmcgovern at pbi.org
>
>
>
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