Participating Frequently

Question

General Advice and Question on Saving Book Files

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
March 22, 2010
3 replies
948 views

I am still relatively new to FrameMaker. I attended a one on one course 12 months ago for two days. When I attended this course I was totally oblivious to the features of FM, it was totally foreign software. I had looked through the User Guide and as part of the course received Classroom in a Book. I have not spent a lot of time on FM in the last 12 months as I still have to produce manuals in the old format. The changeover is a huge project.

I have searched this forum many times and found the answers I have needed to many of my questions and learnt so much that I had not fully understood.

I would just like to confirm now with the users of this forum that I am going about my project in converting to FrameMaker in the right way and I have a question on saving books etc.

I have Operator and Service manuals for four machines (with variations between each machine and then variations between each of those basic models). Parts of the Operator and Service manuals are interchangeable.

I want to be able to single source my material and I am setting up an Excel spreadsheet which will breakdown each section of both manuals. Once completed when a machine is ordered the Excel spreadsheet will produce the details of the files needed to complete a book (manual). There will still be work needed on the book files before the manual can be produced.

My files are double sided with each Chapter starting on the right hand page and I am using variables and conditional text. The manuals contain columns, graphics, tables etc.

I have done test runs and have managed to accomplish the layout in PDF that I want for the final manuals which will be printed. I am only working on four machines at this stage, once this is set up others will be added or I may have to set up another lot of single source files.

Am I on the right track?

My specific question is that currently I use master files for each machine which are updated as needed. These files are then saved to another folder and identified by a Serial Number and Customer. The serialised files are then saved to PDF. I would like to continue this process as in the future the manuals for that specific machine may need to be revised (i.e. Rev. 0 to Rev. 1 and so on).

So basically I have all my single source files from which I produce a book file and save it to an appropriate folder which identifies its Serial Number and Customer. I don’t know if I have missed something very simple but I want these serialised books to remain as is, I do not want them updated when I make a change to my single source documents. I want to be able to produce my manuals for any number of machines from my single source without changing the book files that have already produced a manual. Is this possible?

I am using FrameMaker 7.2 b144.

I hope this posting provides a clear view of what I am trying to achieve.

Many thanks in advance for any advice and answers that are provided.

PS This is the first time I have ever posted to any forums.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Van Kurtz

Inspiring

I will affirm Arnis' suggestion to use Bruce Foster's Archive plugin. I think it is exactly what you need. As you update your master files to the point where you want to "freeze" them, the plugin copies the files you need for that incarnation, along with all its graphics and text insets, into another folder; in the process, it updates all the graphic references to point to the new locations. You can still make minor updates to those files in the future, if needed, and it does NOT affect the master files.

One caveat: when you do the freeze, make sure you have updated the files to exactly where you want them. If you find a mistake or need major revisions after the freeze, I suggest going back to the master files, make your changes, and then use the archive plugin again. If you make major changes in the archived files and copy them back over the master files, then your graphics references will point to the archived set and not the master set. But for small changes, it is probably easier to make them in both sets of files, master and archived.

K

Kerrie_Louise_17Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you for this advice Van, it is much appreciated.

A

Anonymous

Welcome to the forum, Kerrie Louise -- and congrats on one of the most in-depth postings we've had, it's a triumph of clarity for someone relatively new to FM.

7.2b144 was one of the first FM versions for 7.2 and was eventually superceded by version 7.2p158. I don't recall specifics of the fixes in the update except that they were worthwhile, so if you can do so, I would advise updating to p158 when you can.

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=22&platform=Windows

Sheila

K

Kerrie_Louise_17Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you Arnis and Sheila for your replies.

I will follow up on both of these suggestions with our IT people.

Sorry my original post was so"long winded" I did get a bit carried away.

Matt-Tech Comm Tools

Community Expert

It sounds like you want to be able to open the book files and print without updating...

This isn't the case. Each book will need to be updated before output.

The reason is that your pagecount (and thus any toc, index, and xref's) will be different in each book and thus will need to be updated.

The books will still need a opening and updating prior to output, but you could easily (cheaply) script that process so that you could batch output the books.

-Matt

Matt Sullivan
director of training
roundpeg, inc.

http://blogs.roundpeg.com
http://twitter.com/mattrsullivan

-Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant

K

Kerrie_Louise_17Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you for your reply, Matt.

I do want to update the book files, to produce a TOC, correct page numbering, pagination etc and to change the variables (e.g. serial number) and conditional text before I convert them to PDF (format used by our printer) but I want to retain those book files thereafter for future use if needed, I do not want them to update after this point.

Thanks again.

Kerrie

Arnis Gubins

Inspiring

Kerrie,

It sounds like you want to lock those specific versions in time once the PDF is generated. You might want to have a look at Bruce Foster's Archive utility for FM. See: http://home.comcast.net/~bruce.foster/Archive.htm

This will create an archive copy of the book and all component files & graphics.

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