single-sourcing PDF and "text with layout"?

[Lizak, Samantha]

Back when we were still doing an ASCII version of the Release Notes, I developed a template that used the same paragraph tags but had different font (a fixed width) with headings in all upper case, bullets replaced with o, -, and + for the three possible levels, and a different page layout to force things into a certain line wrap. (There were probably a few other tweaks as well; I seem to recall that forcing the indent was giving me headaches.  May have used tabs with an awk script to convert tabs to spaces.)

To produce the ASCII form, I'd apply the other template, save as Unix-based text (the product still does not have a Windows version), and add a few last touches such as underlines under the H1s, and possibly adjusting indentation. (It has been four or five years, and this was all in FM 6 for Unix so may not be needed now.) 

Hope this gives you at least a small leg up on the problem-

Sam.

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Robert Lauriston
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 2:45 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: single-sourcing PDF and "text with layout"?

I've inherited a couple of docs in FrameMaker that have for some years
been delivered in both PDF and plain text and am obliged to continue
doing that.

As far as I can see from the source, working directories, and so on,
the PDF was generated from FrameMaker, and the text version was
maintained by making the same changes twice.

Any suggestions on single-sourcing the text output? People are used to
the text being pretty readable, with headings in caps, indents using
leading spaces, bullets using "o," and so on, so FM's native save as
text is not acceptable.

Best solution I've found so far is MIF2Go > RTF > Word > Save As >
Text with Layout (*.ans). That's kludgy but close enough that I could
probably make it work by tweaking the FM template and/or MIF2Go
options and maybe doing some post-processing with a script.

Acrobat's save as Accessible Text also seems promising but not as
close to what I need as the above.

Once upon a time there was FM2A for precisely this sort of task.
What's the latest version of FM it will work with?
http://www.fsatools.com/oldies.html

Any other suggestions?
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