Importing InDesign documents to FrameMaker 8

Thanks to all of the "FM forum nerds" and your friends, the "ID forum nerds." All of your input has been very helpful for Jonathan and me. Alas, our backlog prevents us from joining your crew of forum buddies, so for now, we appreciate your input and will attempt to use it wisely as we investigate the SDL software and make our choices. We'll try to pop back in a few weeks to let you know how things are working out and whether Author Assistant is something you guys may want to learn more about.

Thanks again. Bye for now! Karen

Karen,

Sometimes in a forum like this a 'debate' on subjects and problems is a good way to solve discrepancies and quirks.

Sometimes language differencies and lack of ... (we come from many countries) creates threads in which we need to explain ourselves one more time.

Personally I find that these discussion, for whatever reason, always appear when FM is compared to other products (e.g. ID or Word). It is as if the "war" of the supreme products comes live when we try to defend and justify why WE (FM forum nerds) try to defend FM.

I have been in this forum for years now and never been offended by anyone with any kind of remark (however harsh they might have been). Behind all answers I have always sensed the individual's urge to defend an opinion and professional approach to the question and subject in hand.

And, taken the present thread, you will always find many lenghty remarks on the subject. Blame it on Adobe if you want. They are the ones who have both products. And in Europe almost always the ones that has kept the war of ID and FM alive.

keep smiling
thomas

Hi, Karen:

* Regarding keeping up with posts and threads - you can subscribe to specific forums and choose to receive postings as they arrive, or accumulated into digests that are sent at intervals you choose.

* Earlier in this thread, I asked Jonathan some questions and suggested some solutions, but neither you nor he has responded.

* Regarding dealing with exporting multiple independent ID stories as RTF for use in FM: I believe there's at least one ID script that exports all stories in one action. I think there may also be one script that combines all stories into one. You can ask on the ID general forum or the ID scripting forum. One problem with combining multiple ID stories within ID is that each story frame's position on the page is in an implied order - I think it starts at top-left, and proceeds row-wise across, then down, ultimately ending at bottom-right. If your multiple small story frames don't follow this pattern, the chunks accumulated into a single combined story may be in very confusing order.

* Regarding the conversation about creating layouts with multiple small frames, rather than a few larger flows: I've always thought that this was a common and accepted practice in design work, perhaps because that's what I've seen most often. It was hard for me to understand how to work in that kind of environment, because the FM single-flow model is my mainstay. Converting content from a many-small-story model into a FM single-flow model is a lot of work that may not repay the investment for a single instance, but perhaps might be worthwhile if there are many instances, or some need to "round trip" between the two models.

If you're even only slightly considering yet an additional application - Author Assistant - with expectations that it will solve many of your problems, it's essential to have a clear set of goals against which you evaluate the abilities of the new (and existing) tools. This is especially important in the situation you describe - too little time, too much work.

HTH

Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

Oh, i just went to that thread you mentioned. I had put out a thread many months before that--don't even remember when and don't have time to hunt it up--thinking I MUST be missing something obvious (which apparently I am). From what I can remember, the first couple responses basically told me to get over it because it wouldn't do that. I SHALL investigate further next week. : )

I didn't actually think you were calling ME an idiot, but I definitely like the tone of this e-mail much better than the others.

Personally, I LOVE Help files, but my new intern (since last September), Jonathan, is not nearly as fond of them. Being a part-time, "lone writer" (except for Jonathan) for an engineering department with a pretty heavy backlog, I haven't had NEARLY the time to dedicate to software that I would like. Hence the reason I send young Jonathan on this errand for me. We have several engineering departments, but no writers for any of them--the engineers actually do their own documentation--eek!

I actually didn't go back to the header/footer thread because I got the impression from the first few postings that it just wasn't meant to be done in InDesign. I guess I'll have to pop back over there.

I'm just recently, with Jonathan's help, getting caught up enough on writing manuals, document standards, safety standards, etc. to start tweaking some of the InDesign issues I've been fighting by myself since I started here in 09/06. Then, of course, I still have to determine if it is even worth pursuing these questions if this Author Assistant program from SDL (that is compatible with FM) is going to be something we should purchase.

I wish somebody would respond to THAT thread. So far, I haven't gotten a single e-mail. : (

Thanks again. K

I thought this forum was about trying to help people find solutions for accomplishing tasks, not about alienating users who may or may not do things the way "you" do. If anyone has any other suggestions that would HELP Jonathan and me convert master pages and styles in ID to FM (rather than attack other contributors), I'd love to hear them.

Kenneth, it seems like you have a wealth of knowledge to share. You're input about where to put the cursor was the KEY we needed to unlock this little mystery. If you'd keep your "candid" insults to a minimum (noted in key words like WRONG, IDIOTS, etc.), they'd even be more welcome.

Karen

I never said an ID story was not the same as in FM. I merely stated that the 'normal' way of using ID creates a lot of "stories". Meaning more work.

How can you then define 'normal'. I have been using PageMaker, Quark and InDesign since , well the mid 80ies. In most cases I have come across the 'normal' user does in fact use lots of small frames (linked) to form their documents. None of these are idiots. On the contrary. They use ID exactly what it has been intended for. People who start from scratch today using ID tend to use different methods (i.e. FM like). But from my position the vast majority of ID users are in all other businesses than Technical Documentation.

I did mean that each story can consist of several linked frames (thanks for the clarification)

I forgot to say that I often use a plug-in to export PDF to Word/RTF or other formats. In that way I do get tags. These are usually meaningless, but using one of Fm's numerous tools for clean-up it is not that hard to do.

keep smiling
thomas

When people said that we could export in rtf and then use the rtf in FM, I realized that recreating the documents in FM would be WAY too time consuming--we have LOTS of photographs, annotations, etc. So, I'm definitely planning to just leave them in the PDF form they are in and make any future changes in the PDF or in individual docs that could be inserted between pages in the PDF.

Basically, our completed manuals are in PDF. We have Excel files, Solidworks files, Promise E, etc. To link them together (and keep them secure), I just convert everything to PDF for on-line viewing. We can also print from the PDF, but I print a lot of things from the original software.

This is why I am kind of over the idea of how to update ID books in FM and am mostly concerned with the most expedient way to create FM documents that look just like my ID documents.

Just grasping a few words from the thread: "each story".

That is in effect the core difference between most ID docs and FM docs.

The reason is more or less historical since this method (of creating lots of different stories that are linked), derives back from the first versions of PageMaker and Quark (mid 80ies). This again means that most jobs I come across in ID today still use this method.

It is method which works in ID. NOT in FM. And then when you have to export the text as RTF you have to do so story by story (or batch). Creating a lot of RTF files.

IF you also use ID the CORRECT way, i.e. lots and lots of small independant textframe, you get an equal amount of smaller files.

The job of assembling these can be quite time consuming, when you have to get them into one single smooth text flow in FM.

For this reason I often Export ID files to PDF. Create a better RTF from the PDF file and import this into FM.

Images I always re-import from scratch.

keep smiling
thomas

My apologies. I did not try it myself. I took Jonathan's comment at face value. I don't believe anyone mentioned anything about where the cursor needed to be. He showed me what popped up when he went to export and I didn't see RTF. I'll go check it out. Perhaps this is the "critical step" Jonathan was concerned he was missing. We actually called several collegues throughout our company and no one had needed to do this before. But when they stepped through it from their desk, they got the same result as Jonathan.
Thank you for the tips. Karen