FM 8 to ePub?

[Jeremy H. Griffith]

On Fri, 4 Nov 2011 09:42:29 -0700, "Tina Ricks" <tina at trialguides.com> wrote:

>Can anyone point me to a good reference on the path from Frame 8.0 to ePub?
>
>I work for a small publisher, and about half of our (print) books are in
>FM8. In the last year we have migrated all new projects to InDesign, mostly
>because most of our contract book designers work in InDesign and we needed
>to be consistent with what they were doing. We have 8 to 10 books in FM8
>that I need to migrate to ePub, ideally with as little cost as possible.
>After this conversion, we won't be using FrameMaker much anymore, so I don't
>want to invest any more than needed. 

As David Creamer mentioned, the best tool for ePub, 
and other ebook formats, is Calibre, which is free
or low cost as you choose (by donation).

You can feed Calibre either HTML or RTF.  The native
forms produced by Frame leave a lot to be desired.
Mif2Go produces both with high quality, quickly and 
simply.

BTW, many of our customers have used the Word RTF 
output to get to InDesign.  You don't get to keep
all Frame features, since ID doesn't have them, 
but it's a good start.

Ordinarily, Mif2Go is $295 for a *perpetual* (not 
one-year!) license that includes all upgrades for
the first year, with upgrades and support renewable
annually for $75.

However, for many years we've been offering it for
free to the unemployed, underemployed consultants,
academics, Open Source providers, and many nonprofits.
Reading your mission statement, we see:

  Trial Guides is a different kind of company. We don’t
  help the defense bar. Period. We only publish books for
  plaintiff’s lawyers, and we will never publish any product
  aimed at helping the defense, to damage a member of
  society who has already been damaged. 

Bravo! we say.  So we'll be happy to provide Mif2Go
free of charge, with full support, should you want it.
 
>So. some questions:
>
>--Do I need to upgrade to a more current version of Frame to do this?

No.  Please don't.  We support Frame 6 up, even 5.5.6
in most respects.  Newer versions are **not** better.

>--Is there an intermediary piece of software I need to buy? 

No, but a donation to the Calibre folks would be a 
nice touch.  ;-)

>--Can anyone recommend a good reference (web site, book, etc.) describing
>how to convert Frame documents to ePub?

Again, I'd have a look at what's available from Calibre:
  http://calibre-ebook.com/

All the best to you!

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  <jeremy at omsys.com>  http://www.omsys.com/