Text Inset vs. Variable Question (Jang F.M. Graat) (UNCLASSIFIED)

Mon Dec 15 04:42:18 PST 2014

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: FOUO

Jang,

The service manual work you describe below is exactly the sort of thing I'll be doing (lots of parts, with the added layer of fun that I then also use those part names in the narrative and procedural portions of the text). Unfortunately the work I do is all under U.S. DoD export control, so I can't take you up on the offer of providing any assistance with the conversion process (and why I have to be so vague and generic about the project). As it is, for "conversion" over to word, the source files we have to work with are so inconsistent in terms of nomenclature, structure, and layout that I think that my teammate and I are planning to just retype the thing from the PDF since we have to move or delete about 45% of the information to get it into the correct structure and format. 

I'm using unstructured FM because that is what I've used in the past. Several years ago my office inherited a ~1,000 page technical manual (TM) authored in unstructured FM8, which is when I was able to start using FM. At that time I kept the TM in the unstructured format so I could ask the original author questions. I hadn't considered shifting to structured for the current project simply because I've figured out how to use unstructured well enough to publish a few smaller TM and unstructured is close enough to Word in how I go about working on the TM that I feel like I'm improving my workflow while still staying in my comfort zone. As I've started planning this project I'm realizing that just because FM is more efficient than using Word, that doesn't mean that I'm actually using FM "correctly"! :P

Unfortunately I can't get any expert technical support within my organization, and the idea of paying for any sort of consultant to help our office set up the process would be a near-impossible feat in the current DoD financial climate. I could try to sign up for FM training, but the review and approval process would take *months* that I don't really have available in the project schedule. (I have to email our IT department on a yearly basis to remind them that I actually use FrameMaker and I'd appreciate it if they stopped auto uninstalling it from my computer during network scans.)  Sad to say that just having the ability to choose between FM and Word has been a major innovation for my organization.

Given your analysis about the weaknesses of unstructured FrameMaker to support the sort of work I need to do, I'm going to take some time to experiment with structured and see what I can do with it. Looks like I'll need to go back to the FM user manual and do a lot of reading on the basics (I tried to import the DTDs provided by higher headquarters (https://www.logsa.army.mil/mil40051/menu.cfm) and got lost pretty quickly since I haven't read anything about structured for at least four years!) 

If I can't get structured to work out in the time allotted before we have to start work on the TM, I may go with plan B to solve the root nomenclature consistency issue. (Which is to use a limited number of variables for the really important names and then a carefully version controlled spreadsheet for the rest, printed out and taped next to my monitor. Not pretty, but it would work.)

If you (or anyone else on the list) can think of any (sigh) free online-based training or information resources for getting started with Structured FM10 I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you very much for your thoughtful reply, just knowing not to use to many text insets will be a huge help!

Maeli Zacchetti

-----Original Message-----
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Sent: Friday, December 12, 2014 1:00 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: framers Digest, Vol 110, Issue 9

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Text Inset vs. Variable Question (Jang F.M. Graat)
   2. How to Create Bibliography in FM? (Orly Zimmerman)
   3. Re: How to Create Bibliography in FM? (Robert Lauriston)
   4. Re: How to Create Bibliography in FM? (Alan Litchfield)
   5. RE: How to Create Bibliography in FM?
      (Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain at aeris.net))
   6. RE: How to Create Bibliography in FM? (Craig, Alison)
   7. Re: How to Create Bibliography in FM? (Robert Lauriston)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 19:52:01 +0100
From: "Jang F.M. Graat" <jang at jang.nl>
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: Text Inset vs. Variable Question
Message-ID: <FE1773AF-AF90-4A1A-A29F-09DBF9D71912 at jang.nl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Hello Maeli,

The move from MS Word to FrameMaker is good news, but why the choice for unstructured FM ? The type of document you are hoping to create would be ideally created in structured FrameMaker. Using huge numbers of variables in FM is going to make the author's life hell and is not going to make maintenance of the manuals much easier. Text insets in unstructured FrameMaker are extremely limited and may cause the system to break down as it needs to open 100s of files at the same time when updating the main document.

This kind of work is what structured FrameMaker is excellent for. Instead of text insets in the form of an entire flow in a FrameMaker file, you can reuse single words, table cells, paragraphs or anything else to be pulled in. With the attributes available in each element, you can easily link each item to an element in a database (or Excel sheet). In one of my projects, I am building service manuals that have 100s of parts lists, each containing up to 50 parts, each of which is pulled out of a single file that holds all the parts info. Updating this service manual is a matter of pressing one button and takes 5 minutes. And with the built-in XSL engine in FrameMaker, attribute-based filtering and ExtendScript all in the box, i.e. without installing any third party procuct, there has to be a REALLY good reason not to use this product in the way it was intended.

If you HAVE to work with unstructured FrameMaker, possibly because of some outdated regulatory principles, there are still options to automate the work using ExtendScript, but it becomes much harder to program - and harder to check if the results are OK. If you need support in getting the info from MS Word to structured FrameMaker and/or automating the process of pulling info from a spreadsheet into a structured FM document, I can offer those services. The nice thing about using structured FM is that this can be programmed without even having any real content available, so confidentiality issues can easily be avoided here.

Kind regards from Amsterdam

Jang

JANG Communication
Smart Information Design
Amsterdam - Netherlands
Cell +31 6 4685 4996
http://www.jang.nl

> I'm getting back to unstructured FrameMaker 10 (after two years of having to use MS Word). So apologies if I don't use some of the correct terms or if I'm misunderstanding some of FrameMaker's capabilities!
> 
> I'm doing the planning work for converting a technical manual from MS Word into FrameMaker 10. The system has over 100 parts, currently each part has two to five different variations on the name scattered throughout the manual, so a huge component of this conversion is getting the nomenclature down to a single version of each part name. Since most of the names will change at some point in the next year my goal is a single point of edit for each part name, to save some headaches down the road.
> 
> On previous projects I've used ~20 part name variables (created in a master file, then applied to each *.fm file through a book update) and then inserted that part's variable any time I need to use the part name.  For this project with 100+ parts it seems like that could start getting painful, just in terms of scrolling through a massive variable list.
> 
> I was thinking that I could use text insets as another option, if it were possible to import from a single cell in a table (e.g. excel file). That would let me use the spreadsheet that I'd have to create anyway for planning out the variables (and internal tracking of what name I'm assigning to a given part number).
> 
> In the past I've used text insets to reference repeated short paragraphs, using a series of individual text documents to hold each paragraph. So I guess I could do the same thing again, but then I'd end up with 100+ text files, which seems like a different kind of inconvenient compared to the 100+ variables.
> 
> One major limitation: with my organization's network policies I cannot install 3rd party software, and the review and approval process to purchase extensions or supplements to Adobe's software would be so arduous that it may as well be impossible. So I'm limited to what I can do without having to install anything else.
> 
> Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated! (Or even advice on 
> where I could go to read up on the various ways to effectively manage 
> nomenclature updates in unstructured FrameMaker.)
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Maeli Zacchetti

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 20:34:27 +0000
From: Orly Zimmerman <orlyz at marvell.com>
To: "framers at lists.frameusers.com" <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: How to Create Bibliography in FM?
Message-ID: <87a62181610c44fe9bc1d41a9ad483ec at IL-EXCH01.marvell.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

HI All,
I have been given a task to create a bibliography for an article I'm writing. I would like to use Framemaker, but I have no idea how I get all the footnotes on the last pages of the file or in an appendix file as opposed to on the page where the footnote was created.

I don't mind writing out the Bibliography entry (I understand that there are different formats - as long as I stick to one format, I just add them as I create the article). Now I'm up to 6 different bib's. I'll cite it from page 1, and then cite from page 3 (using an x-ref in Footnote style); so page 3 needs to go back to page 1 to see the footnote. This doesn't look right. And I will probably site the same footnote later on in the doc as well.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Orly Zimmerman

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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 12:44:35 -0800
From: Robert Lauriston <robert at lauriston.com>
To: Orly Zimmerman <orlyz at marvell.com>,
	"framers at lists.frameusers.com" <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: Re: How to Create Bibliography in FM?
Message-ID:
	<CAN3Yy4CJq0=io=SEcSK_kYtFYYweNw-Y9qNqZ+rsZx_jP2btpg at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Don't use the footnote feature. Create a bibliography_entry paragraph format including an autonumber, then use a cross-reference in running text. Then you can cross-reference the same entry as many times as you like.

On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Orly Zimmerman <orlyz at marvell.com> wrote:
> HI All,
>
> I have been given a task to create a bibliography for an article I?m 
> writing. I would like to use Framemaker, but I have no idea how I get 
> all the footnotes on the last pages of the file or in an appendix file 
> as opposed to on the page where the footnote was created.

------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 09:47:27 +1300
From: Alan Litchfield <alan at alphabyte.co.nz>
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: How to Create Bibliography in FM?
Message-ID: <548A02DF.9070705 at alphabyte.co.nz>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed

Hi,

FM has never really been that great with such tasks. If it is an article you are writing in which you are going to cite references and you want a coherent style, then I would suggest using bibTeX/LaTeX or bibLaTeX/LaTeX.

However if you are wedded to FM then you can export your text from FM as rtf and use one of the MS Word linked applications like EndNote. Newer versions of Word have a built in referencing engine that I have not used but others say is pretty good. Given that amount of work you may be just as well to go with the above suggestion or type and format the references by hand. At least in FM you can define paragraph and character styles relative to the reference formats.

Alan

On 12/12/14 9:34 am, Orly Zimmerman wrote:
> HI All,
>
> I have been given a task to create a bibliography for an article I?m 
> writing. I would like to use Framemaker, but I have no idea how I get 
> all the footnotes on the last pages of the file or in an appendix file 
> as opposed to on the page where the footnote was created.
>
> I don?t mind writing out the Bibliography entry (I understand that 
> there are different formats ? as long as I stick to one format, I just 
> add them as I create the article). Now I?m up to 6 different bib?s. 
> I?ll cite it from page 1, and then cite from page 3 (using an x-ref in 
> Footnote style); so page 3 needs to go back to page 1 to see the 
> footnote. This doesn?t look right. And I will probably site the same 
> footnote later on in the doc as well.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Orly Zimmerman
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> You are currently subscribed to framers as alan at alphabyte.co.nz.
>
> Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com.
>
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to
> framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com
> or visit 
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>
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> http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
>

--
Dr Alan Litchfield
AlphaByte
PO Box 1941
Auckland, New Zealand 1140

------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 13:25:08 -0800
From: "Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain at aeris.net)"
	<Syed.Hosain at aeris.net>
To: "Alan Litchfield" <alan at alphabyte.co.nz>,
	"framers at lists.frameusers.com" <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: RE: How to Create Bibliography in FM?
Message-ID:
	<B4C122ABC82F8744A7E552CA009BA22A1A898419A9 at EX-BE-019-SFO.shared.themessagecenter.com>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Yes! I use bibLaTeX and LaTeX for articles like this too.

Of course, this is not WYSIWYG, and you have to learn LaTeX, but the PDF output is super clean and consistent indeed.

To edit LaTeX input files, I highly recommend TeXStudio - the virtually instantaneous PDF generation (with side-by-side clickable comparison to the source) makes it easy. Almost WYSIWYG in its speed.

Z

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Alan Litchfield
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2014 12:47 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: How to Create Bibliography in FM?

Hi,

FM has never really been that great with such tasks. If it is an article you are writing in which you are going to cite references and you want a coherent style, then I would suggest using bibTeX/LaTeX or bibLaTeX/LaTeX.

However if you are wedded to FM then you can export your text from FM as rtf and use one of the MS Word linked applications like EndNote. Newer versions of Word have a built in referencing engine that I have not used but others say is pretty good. Given that amount of work you may be just as well to go with the above suggestion or type and format the references by hand. At least in FM you can define paragraph and character styles relative to the reference formats.

Alan

On 12/12/14 9:34 am, Orly Zimmerman wrote:
> HI All,
>
> I have been given a task to create a bibliography for an article I'm 
> writing. I would like to use Framemaker, but I have no idea how I get 
> all the footnotes on the last pages of the file or in an appendix file 
> as opposed to on the page where the footnote was created.
>
> I don't mind writing out the Bibliography entry (I understand that 
> there are different formats - as long as I stick to one format, I just 
> add them as I create the article). Now I'm up to 6 different bib's. 
> I'll cite it from page 1, and then cite from page 3 (using an x-ref in 
> Footnote style); so page 3 needs to go back to page 1 to see the 
> footnote. This doesn't look right. And I will probably site the same 
> footnote later on in the doc as well.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Orly Zimmerman
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> You are currently subscribed to framers as alan at alphabyte.co.nz.
>
> Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com.
>
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to
> framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com
> or visit 
> http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/alan%40alphabyte.c
> o.nz
>
> Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit 
> http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
>

--
Dr Alan Litchfield
AlphaByte
PO Box 1941
Auckland, New Zealand 1140
_______________________________________________

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------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 02:15:54 +0000
From: "Craig, Alison" <Alison.Craig at ultrasonix.com>
To: Orly Zimmerman <orlyz at marvell.com>, "framers at lists.frameusers.com"
	<framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: RE: How to Create Bibliography in FM?
Message-ID:
	<00492F332AD5C24F91090267E5FC4FD88AF8BC1F at PEAEXMBX02.analogic.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

In your position, the first thing I would do is look for a bibliographic format used by a reputable journal in a relevant field of study/industry.

That way you don't have to decide what looks good, you just have to follow an accepted style.

Alison

Alison Craig | Technical Documentation Lead
Ultrasonix | 130-4311 Viking Way | Richmond, BC  V6V 2K9 | analogicultrasound.com<http://www.analogicultrasound.com>
T 604-279-8550 ext 127 | F 604-279-8559

From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Orly Zimmerman
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2014 12:34 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: How to Create Bibliography in FM?

HI All,
I have been given a task to create a bibliography for an article I'm writing. I would like to use Framemaker, but I have no idea how I get all the footnotes on the last pages of the file or in an appendix file as opposed to on the page where the footnote was created.

I don't mind writing out the Bibliography entry (I understand that there are different formats - as long as I stick to one format, I just add them as I create the article). Now I'm up to 6 different bib's. I'll cite it from page 1, and then cite from page 3 (using an x-ref in Footnote style); so page 3 needs to go back to page 1 to see the footnote. This doesn't look right. And I will probably site the same footnote later on in the doc as well.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Orly Zimmerman

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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 09:07:39 -0800
From: Robert Lauriston <robert at lauriston.com>
To: Orly Zimmerman <orlyz at marvell.com>,
	"framers at lists.frameusers.com" <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: Re: How to Create Bibliography in FM?
Message-ID:
	<CAN3Yy4Dy0ndQxJxzXvPkBo3WSuF1y3kE1N390WYe6d77Ar09=A at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

This is covered in the FM manual topic "Create and maintain endnotes":

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/framemaker/using/WSd817046a44e105e21e63e3d11ab7f7561e-7f49.html

On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 12:44 PM, Robert Lauriston <robert at lauriston.com> wrote:
> Don't use the footnote feature. Create a bibliography_entry paragraph
> format including an autonumber, then use a cross-reference in running
> text. Then you can cross-reference the same entry as many times as you
> like.
>
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Orly Zimmerman <orlyz at marvell.com> wrote:
>> HI All,
>>
>> I have been given a task to create a bibliography for an article I?m
>> writing. I would like to use Framemaker, but I have no idea how I get all
>> the footnotes on the last pages of the file or in an appendix file as
>> opposed to on the page where the footnote was created.

------------------------------

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End of framers Digest, Vol 110, Issue 9
***************************************

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: FOUO