DTP (sort of) issue

[Alan Litchfield]

Hi Allison,

Good on you for switching the journal publication to Frame ;)

The first question that comes to mind is, why are you exporting to  
XML? Why not use mif2go and to straight to html? You could perhaps use  
style sheets provided by the web developer and further reduce the  
amount of work required.

Alan

On 20/12/2008, at 6:24 AM, Alison Peck wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
>
> I've been using FM now for a couple of years to typeset two  
> journals. I know
> it's a strange use, but it has been working well for a number of  
> reasons:
>
> 1)      The magazines include a fair number of equations
>
> 2)      The journals are for programmers, and include a lot of code  
> listings
>
> 3)      They include a mix of high-resolution photographs and low- 
> res screen
> shots
>
> 4)      One of the journals is also published on a website  
> electronically,
> and I've been using WebWorks to generate the XML that I then send  
> off to
> someone else for subsequent processing
>
> 5)      I already owned (and am an experienced user of) FrameMaker.  
> at the
> time, we were moving from an old version of Quark and anything that  
> meant I
> didn't have to space text using tabs then draw in the lines every  
> time I
> wanted a table had to be an improvement.
>
>
>
> If I insert images, boxed code listing, etc. in anchored frames, the
> contents (I believe, but I've not tested exhaustively) are exported  
> to XML
> in the correct positions (can anyone confirm that this is absolutely  
> the
> case?). However, my ability to position these items is then limited  
> - I have
> much more flexibility if I put them in a non-anchored frame of some  
> sort. I
> realise I could move the anchor to help with the position. but that  
> defeats
> the object of keeping things in the right order.
>
>
>
> Unfortunately, during a redesign a while ago now, nearly all of the  
> listings
> and most of the images were lifted out of the main flow. This has  
> greatly
> improved the appearance for print - and the ease of reading, where  
> listings
> used to start and stop in strange places -  but made the job of the  
> guy
> working with the XML much harder. he's just let me know he's  
> struggling!!
> Most of the listings get dumped at the end of the XML but not  
> necessarily in
> the correct order and quite a few of the listings split across more  
> than one
> "box".
>
>
>
> I'm currently using FrameMaker 7.2 and the bundled WebWorks that  
> came with
> it.
>
>
>
> What I want to know is:
>
>
>
> 1)      Am I missing a trick with FM? Is there a way to indicate where
> something should be positioned if outside the constraints of paper  
> but keep
> the flexibility of positions (sometimes even on a facing page!)  
> required
> when working for print
>
> 2)      Can anyone recommend an alternative package that can do  
> this? Work
> well for print (at least as good as FM) but also exports to XML with  
> things
> in a logical order? (When we used Quark, the listings were just  
> sequential -
> sometimes you got just one or two lines at the bottom of a page and  
> the rest
> overleaf. nobody was happy with it, except for the guy converting to  
> XML ;-)
>
>
>
> Unfortunately, for reasons of layout, many of FM's automated  
> features are
> not being used (ToC is generated manually, because it contains short
> descriptions of the articles; in-text references are in a very non- 
> standard
> format and I need to be able to choose where exactly to place  
> footnotes).
>
>
>
> I appreciate that anything is going to require some manual tweaking  
> to the
> XML. merging a "cont'd" listing into the one before, for example. but
> minimising this would be great.
>
>
>
> If anyone needs to see a PDF of the journal to see what I'm trying to
> achieve, I'm happy to send one out - please contact me off-list.
>
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
>
>
>
>
> Alison
>
>
>
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--
Alan Litchfield MBus(Hons), MNZCS
AlphaByte
PO Box 1941, Auckland, NZ. 1140
http://www.alphabyte.co.nz