[Framers] ExtendScript for save as text, for Git usage ?

[Scott Prentice]

I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

While MIF is a wonderful format for an ASCII description of a FM file, 
it's really not intended for human consumption. First off, it's not 
linear. Each FM object is defined in a section, and within that section 
the objects are declared in reasonably orderly fashion, but it's really 
complicated to jump from one object to another (as happens from 
paragraphs to tables). Also, within a section, say the main body of 
content, you may notice that the strings aren't always complete. You can 
have a sentence fragment that ends in the middle of a word .. then 
continues in the next block. This makes it really hard to search for 
things since they may be split.

What you want is some sort of MIF-normalizer, that can make it more user 
friendly. But, I don't think that really exists. There is a tool called 
MIF-Muncher (http://www.stc-carolina.org/MIF+Muncher) .. that helps with 
scanning for various objects in a MIF .. but I don't know that it'll 
work on a modern system. I made a tool that converts MIF into MIFML (an 
XML representation of a MIF) and back, but that doesn't make it any 
easier to read.

MIFs are great but can also be a very scary place to hang out for much 
time.  :o

Cheers,
...scott


On 6/7/16 5:17 PM, Monique Semp wrote:
>> Do you really find it useful to diff MIF files very often?
>
> Well, I haven't done it yet because it'd involve so much extra manual 
> work. But what I'd like to be able to do is simply scroll through the 
> commit list in my Git client (SourceTree on Windows) and have the 
> diffs show automatically, just as they do for source code. And with 
> MIF files, that'd be possible.
>
> I have noticed, though, that the MIF files are *much* larger than the 
> corresponding FM files (a 197 KB FM file became a 952 KB MIF file!), 
> so now that I see this, I might rethink it.
>
> But as one more tool to make it easier to see what's been done to a 
> particular file, in a way that's not even possible in the 
> FM/FrameMaker view, I'd really like to try it.
>
> -Monique
>
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