My work-flow for dealing with backups from FrameMaker sessions ... Was: RE: Best practices for converting FM to Robohelp

[Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain@aeris.net)]

Sorry for the long response here, but perhaps others might benefit from what I do.

Jeff Coatsworth wrote:


Ø  One longstanding FM grumble is the program’s desire to always maintain all its files (.book, .fm, .backup, .lck, .auto, etc.) in one location – you can never designate another place to keep those “extra” file types out of the way.

Yeah! ☺

My approach is simplistic, way overkill, but it works well for me:


1.      Each of my document versions (i.e., all the .book, .fm, .ini files, etc.) are in a separate working directory.

2.      Below each working directory, there are two subdirectories “Archive” and “Images”. All the images in that document – used by reference – are located in the “Images” sub-directory to keep them separated out.

3.      Just about every time (but not always) that I start an editing session on a document – same or next day or whenever – I manually run a tiny script before bringing up FrameMaker.

4.      This script copies all the files in the working directory to the “Archive” sub-directory (overwriting whatever is in there from the previous session), then deletes all .backup files in the working directory, deletes backup files from my text editor, etc.

5.      This gives me (a) a clean working environment to start the session, and (b) retains a copy of the document so that I can recover to just before the editing session very quickly if I need to do so.

6.      Occasionally, I create and check a PDF at the end of the editing session – particularly when the document is further along – to make sure that the output file generation is working normally, and to send out a review copy.

7.      Once I release a document (the final PDF and its files are released, etc.), the “Archive” subdirectory is permanently deleted – for obvious reasons, the “Images” subdirectory has to stay intact, of course!

FWIW, I don’t like/use the idea of disabling the automatic backup feature within FrameMaker as mentioned by Robert Lauriston – even though my editing session work-flow does not strictly need them anymore.

Also, since I run twice-daily (at 9am and 3pm) automated Windows backups (I love Shadow Protect from Storage Craft!), there is a lot of overkill in my editing work flow here.

Z

P.S: I have learned (the hard way ☹) after three decades of using computers that, when it comes to files and storage, wearing multiple belts and suspenders is a Good Thing™. ☺ So, all my files are located in three places: (a) on my laptop as a normal working location, (b) at work on a 2TB attached disk and (c) at home on a Synology NAS RAID-1 server. If I am on a business trip, the Shadow Protect backups just go to a second drive on my laptop till I return and the files are copied off.
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