Diverse templates and Structure

[Scott Prentice]

Doris...

It's important to distinguish between structured Frame and XML. If the 
source content is stored as XML, when you open those files in Frame, you 
are authoring in the structured Frame UI. If the source is stored as 
binary FM files, when you open those files in Frame you're still 
authoring in the structured Frame UI. In both cases the authoring 
experience is basically the same, that is, you're inserting elements and 
setting attributes rather than applying paragraph and character styles. 
However, with binary FM files, it is still possible to apply paragraph 
and character styles and have them persist after closing and reopening 
the file. With XML files, any style tags that are applied while 
authoring are stripped off when the document is closed.

You say that one writer wants different conditions and paragraph styles. 
Does that means different elements or just that those elements will have 
a different appearance for that writer? If you're working in structure 
(either binary or XML), you should be thinking about elements not 
styles. Conditions are a different story, since you can apply conditions 
in both types of files. You might consider using attributes for 
filtering rather than applying conditions directly. When applying 
conditions, it's possible to apply them over element boundaries, which 
can cause all sorts of unintended problems. Using attributes ensures 
that the filtering happens at the element level.

If this writer wants "styles" that don't exist in the other documents, 
it's likely that this would require additional elements as well. This 
sounds to me like it would add a significant amount of overhead since 
that means maintaining multiple EDDs. I would develop an EDD that is a 
superset of all the types of formatting that will be needed by all 
groups .. those that don't want to use certain elements or styles would 
just ignore those items. I'd do the same thing if it wasn't structured.

If this writer just wants things to have different formatting, but is OK 
with using the same elements, that's not a big deal. You can have 
multiple templates that apply different styles to the same underlying 
structure. This doesn't affect the common data model that everyone is 
using. You can all use the same EDD, but develop your own templates. 
This concept applies equally to the use of binary FM files and XML.

I hope that helps.

Cheers,

...scott

Scott Prentice
Leximation, Inc.
www.leximation.com
+1.415.485.1892

On 9/14/12 1:41 PM, Doris Pavlichek wrote:
> Hi all -
>
> At my company, we are preparing to go from unstructured FM10 to 
> structured FM10. Because of all of the messages on this board and 
> generally accepted "best practices", we are doing some clean-up and 
> preparation now before trying to implement a structure. However, we 
> have at least one writer (we all report to different managers) who 
> wants certain conditions and paragraph tags that will then *not* be in 
> all of the documents. In the past, we have not done this. We all have 
> the same character and paragraph tags, and conditions, loaded.
>
> My question is - will there be problems moving to structure and XML 
> output if we start having this kind of style drift?
>
> Thanks - D
>

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