Content Structuring on a desktop

[Roger Shuttleworth]

Hello Rick

When you say "selecting and moving multi-page chunks of text", do you mean in the document view? If you work in Structure View, you can collapse or expand all elements down to a certain level (hold down Shift while you click the minus or plus sign in SV), then drag and drop chunks, or cut and paste. This makes reordering of text pretty swift. Any numbering of headings would be adjusted automatically.

As for DITA, you could check out the framemaker-dita group on Yahoo. Without more information on what you are thinking of doing with DITA, it's hard to advise. But you can certainly implement DITA using FrameMaker without spending a lot on extra tools. Check out the DITA-FmX plugin at www.leximation.come, for example.

Hope this helps.

Roger

Roger Shuttleworth
Technical Documentation
AV-BASE Systems Inc.
1000 Air Ontario Drive, Suite 200
London, Ontario
N5V 3S4
Tel. 519 691-0919 ext. 320
rshuttleworth at avbasesystems.com


----- Original Message -----
From: Dr Rick Smith
[mailto:rick at cryptosmith.com]
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Sent: Tue, 26
Jan 2010 12:27:13 -0500
Subject: Content Structuring on a desktop


> I wrote my first two books by creating huge outlines in ThinkTank or  
> MORE, and importing them into Framemaker. The last book was published  
> in 2001 using Frame 5 or a Mac (grumble grumble). The MORE-to-Frame  
> conversion created five levels of headings which became chapters,  
> sections, subsections, on down to some bulleted lists. At the leaf  
> level I could include a summary paragraph that I'd use as a starting  
> point for the real writing.
> 
> I'm halfway through a new project (just converted from Frame 7 to 9)  
> and I miss the old flexibility. The current crop of outliners are  
> garbage. The MS Word outline format doesn't seem to bring format tags  
> into Frame, so you lose the hierarchy. The only outlining tool that is  
> close to MORE is a now-unsupported screenwriting tool. And its import  
> ability makes it nearly useless, too.
> 
> I know how to build a structured document in Frame, but I see no no  
> easy way to work with structure pieces at a macro level, like "Move  
> section 3.2 to under 5.3" except by selecting and moving multi-page  
> chunks of text.
> 
> I've read about DITA and I'd love to use a database to store chunks of  
> the document (that's how I think) but these solutions seem to require  
> server-level implementations or unexplained bits of additional software.
> 
> Rick Smith
> http://www.cryptosmith.com/
> 
> 
> 
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