single-sourcing PDF and "text with layout"?

[Robert Lauriston]

FM10's Save As > Text Only doesn't do any indenting, so parts of the
resulting file are harder to read than users are used to.

On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 9:13 AM, Lizak, Samantha
<samantha_lizak at mentor.com> wrote:
> Never needed the MIF2GO and Word aspects; I'm a bit confused as to why you add them in. What particular problem are you seeing when applying a fixed-width layout template and then saving in the correct text format?  I notice that Windows FM8 only offers 1 .txt choice instead of the 3 I recall from Unix; is the issue that the Windows form doesn't force line ends?
>
> -Sam.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Robert Lauriston
> Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 11:10 AM
> To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
> Subject: Re: single-sourcing PDF and "text with layout"?
>
> 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?