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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>I like the idea of FM going to a straight XML authoring environment. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>This automatic conversion of unstructured FM documents to XML sounds great! But how would it be done? By encasing paragraphs in their paragraph tags? It's a bit harder than that to figure out the structure of a document; you would have to feed that into the conversion process somehow. How many people would be willing to do that? And how many current unstructured FM documents would be well suited for such conversion?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>If somebody could figure out a clever visual tool that would allow you (within a screen editing tool like the FrameMaker user interface) to open a book giving the name for the doctype, then walk you through the document as you pick out the places for each tag that has started to end and define all the containers that are within that container --- well, that would be great! You'd have to have a pretty good idea about how XML works for this to work effectively, even if such a tool existed. And any automated process based on formats within the document, would probably give pretty weak results leaving all the upgraders to wonder what is 'sposed to be so spiffy about XML.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Craig<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><a name="_MailEndCompose"><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></a></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> framers-bounces@lists.frameusers.com <br><br></span><o:p></o:p></p></div></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;line-height:15.75pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>...<snipped>...</span><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>FrameMaker should be converted into a true XML authoring environment. There should be no structured or unstructured frameamerk. There should just be FrameMaker, which has XML files. When I upgrade to the latest version of FrameMaker, all my binary files should be converted into XML documents. You should publish a XSD that defines the XML doc structure and leverage the existing XSLT engine, so that out of the box any FrameMaker book can be converted into any publishing format the user would care to. And also allow the user to design their own XSLTS to convert into some other format that people haven't even thought of yet. That way I can truly single source all my content in FrameMaker instead of having to use the buggy Framemaker to Robohelp integration.</span><o:p></o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>In addition, provide a GUI that allows me to design a template and structure (similar to structured framemaker ) that allows me to perform schema validation of the structure and enforces controls on what the template may contain. Basically, this would just be a port of EDD more or less.</span><o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>the point is that FrameMaker fundamentally needs to be an XML authoring environment instead of XML authoring kinda sorta supported if you are willing to bite the bullet and convert to structured FM. Increasingly few people can do so because the cost is so high, its hard to make a business case. I know I can't and I have looked into this extensively. Adobe has tried to pretend that converting over to structured authoring is easy but in order to do this they have to have SEVEN webinars or a 7 hour training session just to give the basics!! While a huge change, I believe this one architectural change will provide the framework to address many of the other problems and competitive disadvantages framemaker has with other products out there. </span><o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;line-height:15.75pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>...<snipped>...</span><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;line-height:15.75pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;line-height:15.75pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Sincerely,<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;line-height:15.75pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Joseph Lorenzini<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></div></body></html>