Would like to get comments from people about my flow changes (Was RE: Resources to help a newbie create DITA documents in FrameMaker 10)

[Grant Hogarth]

Hi Syeed---
   I would suggest you look at MIF2Go if you've just got one writer or
workstream, or possibly WebWorks if you have multiple.  Both do all that
you ask for.
I've used both, and am very happy with MIF2Go.  WebWorks ePublisher
Express is working fine for a client, but I don't do anything but feed
things through the processor for them, so I dont know much about
setup/configuration for that product.

Grant

On 5/18/2012 12:07 PM, Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain at aeris.net) wrote:
> Thanks, Nadine and Scott.
>
> As I mentioned in my other e-mail, DITA is just a learning curiosity for me at this point. It *seems* overly compex for what I need, but looking to learn nevertheless ...
>
> Now to real reason for this thread!
>
> My *current* flow is simple:
>
> 1.	Write the documents and specifications in Unstructured FrameMaker 10.
>
> 	These typical range from 10 pages to 200 page FM books (typically as four separate chapters: Title, Content, Body and Index), and all have similar look and feel - given that I am the only author, I can control this easily (and anally! :)).
>
> 	The content has quite a few referenced hyperlinks to other content within them (only a few to external URL's) and these do come out properly in the PDF.
>
> 	Sidebar: my experience with text references (which I *would* like to use for common content) has been not good - due to *my* not wanting to waste time figuring out what *I* am doing wrong. My typical problem is that character formats applied to text within the referenced content does not show correctly in the final output, and I haven't bothered figuring out why - although I would like to someday keep the common text in other files (text or FM) really, so that a single change to them gets reflected in all the referencING documents.
>
> 2.	Print to PDF using Adobe Acrobat X Pro.
>
> 	I have found that "Save as PDF" and "Print to Adobe PDF" usually results in differing output and have learned, over the years, to experiment with each new release of DM and Acrobat, and the settings, till I get what I need. With the latest versions of FM 10 and Acrobat Pro X, it looks like "Print to Adobe PDF" is best at the moment, although "Save as PDF" from within FrameMaker worked a lot better in the past.
>
> 3.	Fix the few PDF file properties that did not come across from FrameMaker 10.
>
> 	This is usually stuff like Copyright information and meta-data that I just change manually - some can be "set and forget" in FrameMaker 10, but others need changes after the PDF is done. I have not found the place in FrameMaker to do some of these items ...
>
> ... deep breath moment ...
>
> However, I have a *new* need for the near future.
>
> There is a desire to have our documentation and specs, etc., as hyperlinked HTML pages - but, with the PDF as an available separate option still). I *do* like the idea of doing this actually, and now need to take my current FM books and specs and output them in the correct format (for Confluence ... see below).
>
> But, my early experiments with using the HTML output capability in FM 10 and Acrobat Pro X is *miserable* to say the least! The result is atrocious and unusable really.
>
> In the interim, one person has been taking my PDF documents (he does not know how to use FrameMaker) and creating all the HTML pages manually from the PDF text (argh!) and inserting them into Confluence (see http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/overview for more info on that).
>
> The result is a loss of the text hyperlinks, lots of time to do the work, etc., etc., etc.
>
> So, I need to change my flow to output clean HTML that can be far more easily put into Confluence and am trying to figure out the best way to proceed here.
>
> Do people have recommendations as to the best workflow for this? I have changed the title of this thread to make sure that I don't confuse everybody ...
>
> Thanks!
>
> Z
>
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