Handling of copied images when converting unstructured documents to structured

[nichahn]

Good morning

Yesterday I converted an unstructured FrameMaker document to a structured one using the functions provided by FrameMaker. The document to be converted contained a copied image. During conversion, there was no automatic export of the copied image resulting in the required href attribute not being filled with a value.

I ask myself how to handle copied images when converting unstructured content to structured. I know that, when saving a FrameMaker document in *.htm format, FrameMaker exports copied images of the document. But there must be a better solution than saving relevant documents to *.htm before conversion, renaming them and manually importing the images by reference.

Thanks for your answers.

Nicole

[Van Kurtz]

Nicole,

I have done many conversions but all had images imported by reference, so I am not quite speaking from experience on this one.

Because the image was copied INTO the unstructured document, there is no reference path stored in the document. Hence, there is no value to fill the href. In general, whether unstructured or structured, the best practice is NOT to copy images into a document but import them by reference. So, part of your conversion task is to get those images out of the unstructured document so that you can then import them into the structured document.

The best approach would be to try to find the original image files; but my guess that is not possible.

Yes, you can convert the unstructured document to htm to get the images out, but FrameMaker will convert them to jpeg or maybe gif, which may not result in the same quality as the image inside FrameMaker.

My suggestion is to create a PDF of the structured document, using Acrobat settings that have image compression and resampling turned OFF. Open the PDF in Acrobat Professional (maybe Standard will do, but do not know), and select Advanced > Document Processing > Export All Images; select TIFF as the file type. This saves all the images in the PDF in the tiff format. Complete the conversion of the Frame document to structured and reimport the images by reference, using the appropriate element in your structure scheme.

NOTE that converting an unstructured document to structured is NOT guaranteed to be a clean, one-step process. There is usually a lot of clean up to do after the conversion. In your case, exporting and reimporting the images is one of them. The conversion cannot convert content that is not in the original file, namely the locations of files that are stored in the file and not referenced by the file.

Hope this helps,

Van

[nichahn]

Hey Van

First, thanks for your answer. Usually, we also import images by reference. Only images that should not be localized into another language are imported as copy such as images of toolbar icons etc. This facilitates the localization process. But when moving to structured writing with XML and using a CCMS there will certainly be a better method.

I know there are additional steps to be carried out before and after conversion. But I want to limit them. Since we save converted documents to XML afterwards, maybe adding some statements to the read / write rules of my structured application will do the job? There should be a way to define that, when detecting a copied image, the image should be exported to *.gif or other format and the path to the exported image be stored in a specific XML attribute? Okay, afterwards, I need to rename the files...

I will certainly try your suggestion with export from PDF.

Thanks a lot.

Nicole

[Russ Ward]

Nicole,

I've never dealt with copied-in graphics so I don't have any direct experience either. However, the Structure Dev Guide has lots of information about this and suggests that you should be able to generate the graphics into files as a part of the export process. Here's a quick paste from the graphics chapter:

Creating graphic files on export
For graphics imported by reference, the software uses the same file for the markup
document as it does for the FrameMaker document. On export, it creates new files for graphic and equation elements that meet any of the following conditions:
•The graphic file was imported by copy.
•The user changed the graphic content in any way while editing the document in
FrameMaker. This includes adding graphic content via the graphics palette, or importing
an additional file into the anchored frame. Note that the user may delete the existing
graphic file and import another one. If the new file matches a file in the DTD’s entity
declarations, or it matches a file on the Entity Declarations reference page, the exported markup will refer to this newly corresponding entity.

Russ