single-sourcing PDF and "text with layout"?

[Robert Lauriston]

Thanks, that's pretty much what I was figuring to do to polish the
MIF2GO > Word > text with layout option.

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 8:46 AM, Lizak, Samantha
<samantha_lizak at mentor.com> wrote:
> 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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