[Framers] VSdocman Outputs to FM

[cuc tu]

Thank you for the suggestions.


I looked at VSdocman with the developer. He has downloaded a trial version, so it is not a product the company currently uses. It is also a plug-in to VisualBasic IDE, which I do not have or use. His basic workflow is to click a tool in VS provided by the installed plug-in, and then fill out a form with fields for all of the content elements related to that one API. Much of this is duplicate content or reused in various context, like creating a syntax example. It looks quite cumbersome to use for anything extensive (estimating ~1000 pg in PDF form, and ~250 pg developed so far).


I will have to be looking at new tools as it seems the content revolution is leaving FrameMaker. How are big companies really managing these workflows, however? What is happening is the developers are finding tools to add user content right into the source code, and then using utilities to provide full content dumps to tech pubs to process into final deliverables. It's all add-hoc and customized by each dev group. This is one developers solution to supporting user documentation.


I should post my thoughts in another thread.


Thanks,

C

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2017 09:01:06 -0800
From: "Monique Semp" <monique.semp at earthlink.net>
To: <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: Re: [Framers] VSdocman Outputs to FM
Message-ID: <5495A9F706E84A819133D344542E13AA at WQI1509Dell>
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Just wondering why the need to convert to FrameMaker at all? Why not just
use VSdocman and create the appropriate output
(http://www.helixoft.com/vsdocman/examples.html)? It purports to create
Examples of Documentation Generated by VSdocman<http://www.helixoft.com/vsdocman/examples.html>
www.helixoft.com
Examples of Documentation Generated by VSdocman VSdocman is a Csharp and VB .NET code commenter and documentation generator. This is an example of a simple .NET class ...



HTML, CHM, PDF, XML, and more.

That would mean, of course, that the result would likely be strictly a
reference doc without much in the way of conceptual or task-focused info.
But it sounds like a reference is all that's being asked for.

-Monique

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Message: 7
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2017 11:20:05 -0800
From: Robert Lauriston <robert at lauriston.com>
To: Monique Semp <monique.semp at earthlink.net>,   "An email list for
        people using Adobe FrameMaker software."
        <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: Re: [Framers] VSdocman Outputs to FM
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        <CAN3Yy4AScAJdJ5-Nfg+cbsRhdtke9r3CaFrGkx35dRkdQm-xYw at mail.gmail.com>
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I agree, if there's an API doc generator, using it would certainly be
my first choice. You might also take a look at Document!X.

That said, recent releases of FrameMaker reportedly do a much better
job of importing Word.