Frame vs. Flare for My Needs

Thu Feb 26 05:09:50 PST 2015

Both native RTF from FM12 and Mif2Go Word export will work to a certain extent, but unfortunately both can have major shortcomings depending on the nature of your content.

1.       FM12’s save as RTF drops all index markers that have been placed in footnotes. An absolute deal-killer if you index citations.

2.       I have not been able to get Mif2Go to be able to produce “real” footnotes in Word. What you get is text that looks like footnotes but really is not, e.g., if someone were to insert or delete footnotes, the faux footnotes do not automatically renumber, and the in-text footnote references are just raw text for appearance’s sake. Converting these faux footnotes to real ones and deleting out the text simulations prior to handing off the document is a cumbersome time-consuming process. I have tried all the permutations of WriteAnums and SeqAnums in _m2rtf.ini, but to no avail.

-Dan

From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Art Campbell
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 4:10 PM
To: John Sgammato
Cc: framers at lists.frameusers.com; Kevin Ryan
Subject: Re: Frame vs. Flare for My Needs

I'd second John. Current FM output ain't bad, and if you want better, MIF2Go RTF is really good. I'd stick with FM and upgrade to a non-antique version (speaking with 4 year's Flare experience) because that conversion isn't really what Flare does better.

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On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 3:39 PM, John Sgammato <john.sgammato at actifio.com<mailto:john.sgammato at actifio.com>> wrote:
FM12 has very good output to Microsoft Word.
I use it all the time for internal use.

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 3:21 PM, Kevin Ryan <kevin.ryan at systemsandsoftware.net<mailto:kevin.ryan at systemsandsoftware.net>> wrote:
Hi,

I could use the advice of some Frame veterans on whether a switch from Frame to Flare might be a delusion-inspired wrong turn for me, or possibly the right way to go.

My company's primary documentation output is PDF user/training/reference guides authored on FrameMaker 7. Not the current Frame version, I know, but sufficient with our good templates to produce solid, professional-looking documents we're proud of. Other current deliverables include context-sensitive HTML topics produced via Mif2go and a limited number of "Process Assistance" MS Word topics.  These latter are a sort of MS-Word help equivalent that our customers can download from our application, edit if necessary, and even upload back into our application for others if they want to. I create Process Assistance MS-Word topics by cutting from Frame and pasting into Word, followed by manual reformatting (ouch).

Our customers (utilities) have been requesting another MS Word output:  Editable MS Word versions of our 20-300 page PDF manuals so that they can edit them for their own purposes (such as internal training).  Unfortunately, we've been unable to find a workable Frame-to-Word conversion process to this end.  I can do manual reformatting to Word in our short Process Assistance topics, but to do it on entire manuals would give me a nervous breakdown.

So, with better MS-Word output generation as my primary goal, I've been considering a switch to Flare. Its capability to output in PDF, Word, and HTML seems as though it might ultimately streamline our processes. As I test Flare by my 30-day trial, though, I'm reminded of the many things FrameMaker does really well — things I might be losing if I made the switch:  For example, precise page layouts, complex graphics, robust tables. To its credit, Flare seems to offer output versatility, excellent documentation and support, and a lot of Marketing momentum.

Am I misguiding myself?  Barking up the wrong tree?

Thanks for any opinions or comments.

Kevin Ryan
Technical Writer
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