Text Inset vs. Variable Question

[Jang F.M. Graat]

Hi Maeli,

I understand your situation. Many others are in similar circumstances where higher echelons have the power and lack the insight to really save expenses in the mid- to longer term. The larger the organization, the more penny-wise and pound-foolish they become.

As for the move to structured FM - that might be too big a hurdle for you given the unstructured character of your base materials. I would spend any extra time on learning a couple of basic tricks in ExtendScript instead. If you create sensible variable names for all your variable content and remain consistent in applying them, then creating a CSV file with the variable names plus their current text content is not a difficult thing to do in ExtendScript. Of course I am assuming you have at least FM version 10, as that is the first one for which ExtendScipt became available. Note that there is no need to install anything, as the ExtendScript Toolkit is installed with FM.

All the variables in your document are available in a linked list and it takes milliseconds to walk through that list in a script and dump the names plus current content into a CSV file. Then you can pull that file into Excel to maintain the variables. The last part of the puzzle is creating another script that reads the CSV and populates each variable in your document with the values from the CSV. If you make it slightly more intelligent, you can combine different values (for different machines) for the same variables in the same CSV file, having one column for each particular book, for instance.

The first resource to look for is the FrameMaker 12 Scripting Guide. I am planning to publish ExtendScript info and tutorials on my site www.progframe.com but I first need some time to finish the content for that.

Whatever the road you choose to travel from here, I wish you all the success you will need.

Kind regards from Amsterdam

Jang

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

> 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
>