Round-trip revisions via MS Word. Alternate methods?

[Rick Quatro]

Hi Dan,

Mif2Go by Omsys is a much better way to get good Word output from
FrameMaker. They will tell you that there is no good tool for round-tripping
between Word and FrameMaker, but if you are doing it anyway, you might as
well make the Frame to Word side as good as possible. I highly recommend
Mif2Go.

Rick

Rick Quatro
Carmen Publishing Inc.
585-366-4017
rick at frameexpert.com



-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Harding, Dan
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2014 9:21 AM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Round-trip revisions via MS Word. Alternate methods?

Good morning,

We have used the same authoring process for eons: Authors/editors work in MS
Word, as well as preliminary indexing work. I then take the MS Word file,
import into FM (unstructured) and do the final print-ready formatting,
making things adhere to our publishing standards and tightening up
consistency.

As a process it work well... until it's time to revise the book for the next
edition.

Our authors and editors will ONLY work in MS Word. PDF comments/revisions
will not work, as there frequently are extensive revisions including
insertion of new sections (multiple pages) of content, as well as shuffling
of content.

When I export the final FM version back to MS Word for them to work on, the
conversion is VERY crude and frequently requires extensive work on the
post-conversion Word files for the editors to be able to work within the
files.

Then of course there's the reformatting from scratch in FM when the
revisions are done (which actually is faster and more reliable than trying
to reconcile changes in the MS Word version with the existing FM version).

Is there a better way to perform the round-trip process given the MS Word
requirement, and barring that, are there better ways/tools to get cleaner MS
Word files from FM than exporting to RTF?

Would making the change from unstructured to structured FM on my part help
in this regard?

Environment:

Windows 7 64-bit Enterprise
Framemaker 10 (unstructured) [NOTE: TCS 5 is on order but I have not
received it yet.] Microsoft Office 2010

Thank you in advance.

Dan Harding
University of Illinois Tax School

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