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A
Anonymous
June 28, 2010
Question

Merging HTML Output Created in FrameMaker and Word

  • June 28, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 480 views

Hi,

Our company uses ePublisher 2008 to convert FrameMaker books into HTML. A customer is asking us to take HTML output they created from a Word doc and merge it into our HTML set. I need to merge together the HTML created from Word with the HTML created from FrameMaker.

For those familiar with WebWorks ePublisher, we have a FrameMaker Adapter license, but not a Word Adapter license as we do all our user doc using FrameMaker.

WebWorks is offering us a costly solution. SobolSoft also sells something called "Join (Merge, Combine) Multiple HTML Files Into One Software". The trial version has very limited functionality, so I can't tell if it will even be of use to me.

Before I go with either WebWorks or SobolSoft for a solution, I wanted to see if anyone out there has any other suggestions first.

Thanks,

Mark.

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    1 reply

    A
    Anonymous
    June 28, 2010

    Have you got a sample of the customer's Word HTML output and actually compared it with your FM output, to see how different the two might be to start with?

    From all the times I've ever looked at HTML output from Word it's pretty much of a dog's breakfast, so I'd be very, very surprised if the two are similar enough to make a merge scenario work. Two more cents (from personal experience), customer-supplied files, particularly HTML, are almost inevitably a moving target, so many opportunities for somebody to make some change on their side that completely blows up the integration you've painstakingly developed. Every new version of Word does things differently, plus there are so many opportunities for content to be "conjoined" from multiple sources resulting in mega challenges.

    Just to give us some context, is the content data-oriented (e.g. catalogs) or primarily text-oriented (manuals or instructions)? How about graphics?

    I've used programmatic tools such as Logictran to do conversions http://www.logictran.com  -- their R2Net product is great for converting HTML / XML etc.  In fact, I'd even suggest that you consider doing the Word-to-HTML step yourselves, rather than having the customer do it, so that you have much, much more control over the results.

    Sheila

    A
    Anonymous
    June 28, 2010

    Hi Sheila,

    The customer's Word HTML output and our FM HTML output is quite different. They eye coulnd't be fooled that they were created on the same template. The customer doesn't care too much about stylistic consistency so long as we manage to merge together their ouput with our FM HTML output.

    The content is text-oriented, with graphics. For example, "on the so-and-so dialog box (x-ref), click so-and-so". I'll look into Logictran.

    Thanks for your help,

    ST.

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