Flare vs DITA

[Rick Quatro]

Let me add to what Chris has said. If you need high-quality PDFs, nothing beats Adobe FrameMaker (InDesign is good too). I can't understand users who move to structured FrameMaker then try to get PDFs from the DITA Open Toolkit. They are never going to be as good as the PDFs that FrameMaker produces. Plus, you can take advantage of FrameMaker's templates: you might have a stripped-down non-WYSIWYG template for authors and content providers, perhaps based on XHTML structure, and then a "pretty" template that a layout person could import that would be suitable for PDF output. That kind of process eliminates the temptation of authors to worry about pagination and line breaks early in the development process.

 

And if the ultimate desire is to ditch FrameMaker, your content is at least already structured, and you can use FrameMaker to get PDFs until your DITA-OT PDF styles are fully developed.

 

Or, another realistic possibility: if you use a schema like DITA, let the authors and content providers use whatever editor they like. Then simply use a FrameMaker license as a "print-engine" to produce high-quality PDFs.

 

Rick Quatro

Carmen Publishing Inc.

585-366-4017

rick at frameexpert.com

 

 

 

From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Chris Despopoulos
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2015 1:12 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: Flare vs DITA

 

Using Maker eliminates FO.  Instead, you set up a Maker template, and work in near WYSIWYG.  If you will use Maker, definitely, use structured Maker.  You could use a simplified structure -- not necessarily DITA.  For example, why not use XHTML?  Then you can make your PDF look like whatever you want via Maker template design, and your source is in XHTML.  If you later want to go to DITA, run a transform (yes, that would be a script).

 

If you want to use Maker to edit DITA, that can be done -- I do it.  Templates are not as straight forward as they could be...  Adobe unfortunately embeds lots of formatting in the EDD in ways that might even be called gratuitous...  That only makes it more difficult to modify your template.  But it can be done, and once done you're using familiar tools...  No FO scripts that need constant tweaking.  

 

Like I said, I do this today.  There are those who poo-poo me for it, but it works just fine.  I'm crying all the way to the bank.

 

cud

===================

Yes, those are the scripts I am talking about.


-Gillian
> On Apr 14, 2015, at 12:03 PM, Rick Quatro <rick at rickquatro.com> wrote:
> 
> Art, Gillian is probably referring to XSL-FO scripts which need to be customized to get the PDF output you want. 
>  

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