Frame Maker 9 and some questions about its indexing and page limits

[Art Campbell]

First, the P.S. -- remember to cut off the tail of a digest when you
post to the list.

Then, the only practical limitations aren't in Frame -- they have more
to do with how much RAM you can pack into your system and having
enough free space on your hard drive for temp files. The larger the
files get, the more you need. But there are doc sets out there that
routinely top thousands of pages. Aircraft manuals, for example. So
you shouldn't have any capacity problems, provided you use the book
feature to collect component chapters/files.

Within Frame, I don't think that there are limitations on indexing either.
If I were you, I'd pick from the several index tools available -- I
like IXGen -- and talk to the vendor about best practices for their
tool Frank Stearns, the guy behind IXGen, is a great resource.

Two monitors? I think they're pretty much mandatory for any kind of
serious work these days. Especially with Adobe products, which
generally have untidy interfaces. Photoshop started the trend, and
then it seems to have spread as corporate policy.

Cheers,
Art

Art Campbell
               art.campbell at gmail.com
  "... In my opinion, there's nothing in this world beats a '52
Vincent and a redheaded girl." -- Richard Thompson
                                                      No disclaimers apply.
                                                               DoD 358



On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 5:49 AM, Shell, Robert<rshell at iafrica.com> wrote:
> Dear Framers:
> I have been enjoying unparalleled stability with my FM 8.p20? running on
> Vista Business edition (with all updates). I have now graduated to the
> Professional Communications Suite 2 and also bought FrameScript. I am a very
> happy camper, although surveying many learning curves.
>
> Nevertheless, the stability of FM9 has encouraged me in my humble
> unstructured authoring style to take on a really ambitious project.
> Historians like me use primary documents, i.e.  eyewitness accounts as their
> building blocks in all their interpretations which are called secondary
> sources. This entails that few people can ever become historians because
> trips to archives are so expensive and intimidating that few venture back
> after their first visit.
>
> I think I can fix that. I figured that primary documents can easily be fed
> into FM and then edited with footnotes and indexed with multiple indexes.
> Thus even I am providing only a glorified finding aid, I am still providing
> a huge, new and fast service to all would be-historians. All in pdf.
>
> My first attempt is now in its second edition and is 7,000 pages long of
> which 1,000 pages were 7 indexes, viz. authors, persons, places, subjects,
> ships, titles and a timeline. The first edition was authored using PageMaker
> with a single index. With the second edition, using FM 8, I experienced
> problems (hangings or crashes) with the generation of all these heavily
> formatted indexes, some three levels deep. But I persevered and the CD is
> now on sale with clickable indexes and embedded Flash movies, etc.
>
> Now with FM9 I have created a full suite of new documents of 42,000 pages,
> and when I say pages I mean real pages as in a 19th century book (300 words
> a page).
>
> So my first question is. Does anyone know what the upper limits of FM9 are
> with regard to
>                      a) number of subdocuments and
>                     b) number and complexity of indexes.
>                     c) total number of pages
> Will Acrobat reader manage with all this?
>
> Finally, does anyone with FM use two screens? I am unhappy with all these
> boxes and pods in FM9 and would like them all on a second screen (which I
> would have to buy). I have not learnt how to dock them yet. Any hints
> gratefully received.
>
> Thanks to the organizers of this wonderful listserv.
>
> Rob Shell
>
>
>