Outline

[quills at airmail.net]

I would categorize this a perceived gains, capabilities, and costs. 
One very big gain and capability that structured documents give you 
is the ability to require only certain structures to fit after other 
structures.

I can't comment on the capability of Enhance to require a  specific 
structure must exist following any other element, or that they may be 
optional, or that they are forbidden. XML will do that under 
FrameMaker, as well as allow you to collapse the structure as you 
describe.

Again, it is about perceived gains, capabilities, and costs. If the 
costs outweigh the gains and capabilities, then you go another route.

Scott

At 12:05 PM +1100 1/28/09, Hedley Finger wrote:
>Scott, Gary:
>
>>  What you are referring to
>>  doing, Hedley, is operating in a structured environment.
>
>You have misrepresented what I actually said.
>
>I have used the DITA XML schema and the DITA-FMx plug-in for FrameMaker
>to develop structured documentation.  But it is certainly a far from
>trivial exercise to set up the structapp.fm file with all the formatting
>rules to get your preferred look and feel.  You would only take on this
>level of setting-up overhead if you could amortise the time/cost over a
>significant number of titles.
>
>I do not think Donald was looking to get into structured documentation
>just yet.  He probably has a virtual structure where, in his mind and in
>his files, Heading 1 /is/ at a higher level than Heading 2.  For those
>who want some of the benefits of structure in unstructured documents
>without the hassle, I highly recommend Enhance for FrameMaker from
>Sandybrook Software.  You can configure it so that Heading 1 is indeed
>higher than Heading 2, so that when you collapse the Heading 1 block,
>any contained  Heading 2 subblocks are suppressed but revealed when
>Heading 1 is expanded again.
>
>Enhance works pretty much like the structured view in Word and you can
>perform all the same operations in Enhance that you can in Word,
>including outlining when you are developing the structure initially.
>
>So for Donald, Enhance is the way to go.
>
>A structured document, preferable saved to XML and opened directly from
>XML (*.fm files are not used at all) has many advantages: you can use
>all the XML tools on the saved files but work in a friendly WYSIWYG
>environment.
>
>Regards,
>Hedley
>
>--
>
>Hedley Finger
>
>28 Regent Street   Camberwell VIC 3124   Australia
>Tel. +61 3 9809 1229   Fax. (call phone first)
>Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558
>Email. "Hedley Finger" <hfinger at handholding.com.au>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>
>
>You are currently subscribed to Framers as quills at airmail.net.
>
>Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com.
>
>To unsubscribe send a blank email to
>framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com
>or visit 
>http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/quills%40airmail.net
>
>Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit
>http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.