Creating an epub file from a Framemaker 10 document

[dhalweg]

Are there special tools I have to have to turn a Framemaker document into an epub file format?

Thank you.

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

I believe you'll need the TCS3 version of FM and RH.

One thing that's not obvious in creating ePub: you'll want to set up the XML Single Source Layout, as RH uses that SSL for the ePub conversion.

-Matt

[yves.barbion]

You could convert your FrameMaker document to DITA topics in XML format and then use oXygen XML Author to transform your DITA topics to ePub.

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

Conversion to DITA seems a huge undertaking just to get ePub, tho. Not to mention the cost and learning curve of oXygen or other structure tools.

I do agree with David, though, that if this is a "one-off" project, Calibre is a great choice.

If DITA is in your future, you have lots of choices, and if you just want to push unstructured FM thru to ePub, then RoboHelp or MIF2go are solid choices.

[David_Crowe]

I did some experimenting with this a few months ago.

The basis of the epub format is XHTML. There are free tools (such as Calibre) that do a good job converting from (X)HTML to epub (and other e-book formats).

If you have one book to do it is probably quickest just to grab the text and reformat with an HTML editor, then process with Calibre or similar.

Using other tools, such as Robohelp, MIF2Go, or FrameMaker’s built-in Save as HTML, would take some time to set up properly, and would therefore be worthwhile if you had a number of books to do that were similarly constructed.

If planning for the future it might be worth considering using XHTML as the base format (i.e. finalising the text in this form) and repurposing either to epub or to print via FrameMaker, or both, as required.

That was my conclusion, at any rate. You need to look at it in your own context, of course.

[SQUIDDS]

Hi, if you have RoboHelp (part of the TechSuite3.5) then generate your ePub. If not, then take WebWorks ePublisher.

Both tools would create a wonderful ePub from DITA.

If you need a more technical documentation for mobile ready, then take the format REVERB with WebWorks,

there is a FrameMaker integration.

- Georg