FrameMaker 10 - generating PDF and Online Help

[Guest]

Hi,

I am new to FrameMaker, having used Robohelp for more years than I care to recall and I need some advice on getting started!

My issue...

I have a client who has landed me with a help system written in FM10. From this they want new templates (formatting) applying, screenshots replacing and the TOC rearranging. In RH I am ...yay,  in FM I am .....Arrrhhhh !

So..

1) Templates - is this easy in FM. I have looked at the tutorials and seen how to create documents with a template, but until I play I am not sure about applying a new template to an existing document. And will the template be applied to both the PDF and online (Webhelp or CHM) outputs?

2) Screenshots - I am hoping this is as straightforward as any other application Insert....

3) TOC - As far as I understand this is a case of updating the structure in the FM navigation panel and then updating the TOC file - is this correct?

So, once I have managed this lot! I then need to output as PDF and online help. From my quick tour of FM I see that I can save as PDF, so again that seems straightforward, however the online help bit seems slightly more traumatic and involves importing into RH. I have RH8 - will this integrate with FM10. And once into RH do I just handle the project as a normal RH project (is this where I apply my formatting for the online help)????

I understand this is an endless stream of questions.....but any help you can offer would be much appreciated!

Thanks

Marian

[Anjaneai_Srivastava]

Hello Marian,

I can uderstand, that migrating from a Software on which you have expertise to something different could be difficult.

But i would say once you get little Hands on FrameMaker, you wuld enjoy it more (no comparisons though), its a very pwer Authoring and Structuring tool.

On your queries--

Templates-- can be imported in FrameMaker and you can generate both Webhelp and PDFs based upon it--

You can create content in FrameMaker, leveraging the existing templates, standards, and processes, and then link the content into RoboHelp to publish several online Help formats

Screenshots-- PNG,GIF,JPEG, Vector images, all can be introduced easily.

TOC-- in FrameMaker you can insert a TOC to a Book, So once you have a Book, Click on Add- Table of Content and Select all Tags on whose basis you would like your TOC to be formulated, so where ever you have used the same tag (say heading1) it would create a refernce Item in TOC for all its occurances.

You Can also Do a Webhelp publish from FrameMaker. Select File-- Publish and it would give you Following Dialog, Configure that and You are all set--

I hope this can give a good Head Start.Though, if you would link you can import the Sme FrameMaker Book in Robohelp project and generate a WebHelp from there too.

All the Best.

Thanks,

Anjaneai Srivastava