Unstructured to Structured: Question about retaining, paragraph formats

[Rick Quatro]

I like Fred's arguments here. I have mainly advocated the
Paragraph/Character format approach in EDDs for two main reasons:

1) It is generally easier to have a single EDD work with multiple templates,
which is advantageous for some document sets.

2) It allows the client a bit of flexibility in determining the look and
feel of their templates. I do the EDD work and they can do the template work
with the Paragraph and Character Designer interface that they are familiar
with.

Because the large number of formats that this approach can entail, you need
to plan your format names carefully so they make sense to the template
designer.

Over time, I have become less strict, and moved to more of a mixed approach.
For certain types of formatting, I will use a base paragraph format and
specify "exceptions" in the EDD; for example, page breaks, extra space at
the end of a list, etc. This still allows template changes with the
Designers, but cuts back on the number of "exception" formats in the
paragraph and character catalogs. I have found that this works well and
still supports the two reasons above. 

Rick

Rick Quatro
Carmen Publishing Inc.
585-283-5045
rick at frameexpert.com




-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Fred Wersan
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2012 1:29 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: Unstructured to Structured: Question about retaining, paragraph
formats

Just my two cents on this.

There is no right answer. Depends where you want the control to be and maybe
your philosophical approach - as in "no formatting in the EDD".

When I went structured, it was an opportunity to reduce paragraph format
bloat. I analyzed what I needed, pared down the paragraph and character
formats and tried to stay that way. I didn't want a different format for
every possible different formatting issue that might come up. In part this
means that if you are strict about things you don't let users deviate from
the set of formats that are provided. But you can cover acceptable
deviations by putting formatting in the EDD (if your philosophy permits
this).

As a practical matter, I have found that due to limitations in the EDD,
there are times when putting formatting in the EDD works well and times when
it just doesn't seem to work right. The conditions get too complicated and
it isn't worth it.

Of course, as a lone writer, I get to make all the decisions, but I try to
act as if it were a bigger setup - no changes to para formats and no new
on-the-fly formats allowed.

With multiple books using the same EDD, they all have to comply or they get
blasted every time I update the EDD, so there is a strong incentive to do
things right.

A previous respondent said: "

The idea with structure is (as has already been said) to separate structure
from display.?"


I am not sure that I entirely agree with that. The idea of structure,
particularly in FrameMaker, is that the computer enforces the formatting
based on the element structure rather than writers needing to apply
formatting via paragraph tags as they go along. If you are in a non-WYSIWYG
environment, then you don't get the display. In FrameMaker you get the
display too, but you don't have to be responsible for it, just for applying
the correct element tags. Whether the computer enforces the formatting based
entirely on what is in the EDD or on a mix of EDD coding and para formats is
an implementation detail. Either way the application of formatting is done
by the computer, not by the user.

Fred

--
Fred Wersan
VT MÄK, Principal Technical Writer
68 Moulton Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
T: +1.617.876.8085 x124  Email: fwersan at mak.com

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