framers Digest, Vol 106, Issue 10

[Diana Bishop]

In response to Message: 10 (below):

We moved to structured FrameMaker/DITA last year and it was a long process. On the other side of it now, it is much clearer and easier to convert our other guides. We got help from a consultant, Matt Sullivan, who is active on the Adobe message boards, as well as Rick Quatro, for FrameScript work that made our conversion process much easier. If you have the budget, and really want to convert to structured FrameMaker, I would strongly suggest hiring Matt Sullivan to help guide you through the process.

However, if your main goal is to create an PDF, you do NOT need to convert your unstructured file to structured format. I am not familiar with what format an ebook would be in (for Amazon Kindle?). For PDFs, you should be able to do a File -> Save as PDF and get a PDF. But perhaps I am not understanding your end goal properly.

I've read that the best reason for converting to structured FrameMaker format is if you want to do a lot of "re-use" of your content in different documents. Is this the case for your project?

We use FrameMaker 11 and I am not familiar with DocBook, but perhaps someone else on this forum can address that.
As far as combining two novellas into one book, in unstructured FrameMaker could you create a new book file and then add the .fm files for both books in order, so that one novella follows the other? In PDF format, you can combine to PDFs, but it sounds like your desired output is an ebook...which I am not so familiar with. I hope there's something helpful in this response...

Diana Bishop


Message: 10
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 11:08:21 -0500
From: Theresa de Valence <TdeV at bstw.com>
To: "framers at lists.frameusers.com" <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: Getting a handle on structured Frame
Message-ID: <53EA3BF5.3030504 at bstw.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed

I started my Frame 12 experience with a new convert to ebook/pdf
project. I created an unstructured book because I
quasi-know-what-I?m-doing in the unstructured world. However, I think to
publish this book as an ebook, it has to be structured. I have had a
long running affair with trying to understand structured Frame and I
have to say that the various pieces of documentation on adobe.com are
next to useless and, unfortunately, much of the documentation by others
(and Adobe) starts with Frame 6 or segues into Robohelp. While I
understand theoretically what?s going on with structured Frame, getting
from here to there is no picnic.

Anyway, I?m starting again with the "new" structured templates which
came with Frame 12. I can see that I?ll have to create or modify an EDD.

Frame 12 installed 13 versions of structapps.fm on my system, either
dated 12/5/2013 or the date I installed the program. There are 6 files
which are 282KB. How do I choose which file to open?

The structapps.fm file which I did open has 3 varieties of DocBook in it
(SGML DocBook, XML DocBook, DocBook2.2.1). How do I choose which DocBook
file to start with?

Also, my project involves converting two novellas into one ebook. I
believe I?m going to require one fm book with two nested books within.
How do I add that structure to the DocBook file?

I now have ~50 files which are components of my unstructured book file.
How would you recommend that I take the contents of those 50 files and
move them into the structured book?


Thanks for your help. I?m sure there will be more questions.

Cheers,
Theresa


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