batch converter or viewer

[_Willem_van_den_Berge_]

Hello,

One of our clients is providing us with several thousand documents in FrameMaker 7 format. We do not use FrameMaker so no-one in our organization can open these files. Rather than buying a FrameMaker license for 20 people who will only use it to view the files, I'd much rather use a viewer or batch convert the files to something we can use (like PDF).

I found references to a FrameViewer but no place to actually download it. I wouldn't mid picking up a copy of frameMaker to convert the fm files to pdf, but i have not found abatch convert feature and I don't feel like manually converting 8000+ files one file at a time.

Any ideas would be appriciated,

W

[peter minneapolis]

FrameViewer was discontinued some time ago, as Acrobat gained prominence.

If you don't need to manipulate the FrameMaker documents, ask your customer to provide PDFs. It's possible to convert many FrameMaker documents as a batch, using a FrameMaker book file. There's an option to combine the multiple FM documents into one PDF, or to keep them separate.

One benefit of creating the PDF with FM is that manually-created FM hyperlinks, cross-references, and TOC and index entries will be active within and across documents.

Another benefit is the option to create Acrobat bookmarks from designated FM paragraph formats (like headings, etc.)

Both of these will make your navigation in the documents easier.

Further, if you have full Acrobat, you can create a full-text searchable index from one, some, or all the PDFs, that makes it efficient to search through these thousands of files.

HTH
________________
Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

[Art Campbell]

Assuming you to get a copy of Frame, you can batch process the files by either setting up sets of files in books, or writing a script in FrameScript, an add-in, which should process the files in a directory.

Depending on what you want to do with them, you also have the option of using FM and an add-in such as Omsys.com's MIF2GO to save the component files in books out in RTF format.

And finally... depending on what you need to do, you should consider exploring Frame and its capabilities to meet your needs.

ARt

[AxialInfo]

There are two freebie batch programs that work with FM and could output the content as PDF, rtf, html, etc. (assuming you have a copy of FrameMaker to use):

Cudspan's doBatch http://www.freeframers.org/freeware/cud/

and Datazone's DZbatcher: http://www.datazone.com/dzbatcher2.html