Is FrameMaker the solution to our needs?

[T_Cox]

I'm posting my question here because FrameMaker's product description sounds relevant to our needs.  Please consider the following senario and advise whether FrameMaker --or another Abode product --can accomplish the following...

Our company packages the same product in multiple sizes (SKU’s).  The product labels’ wording are essentially the same for each SKU with only minor adjustments (e.g. Net contents description, manufacturer details, etc.).

The original label content is owned by a team of technical writers.  They maintain a singular master document for a product family.  They give this master document to an editorial group that selectively extracts the content for each SKU and adds the missing details described above.  They, in turn, send these customized documents to our graphics department for layout.

The editorial group would like any belated changes made to the master document to flow automatically to the custom documents. Also, if a change is made to one custom document that should be made to all of the custom documents they would like it to occur automatically as well.  Ultimately, any belated changes to the custom documents would automatically update the final InDesign artwork.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Kind of sounds like overkill to me - FM is designed for long format documents because it came out of book publishing originally. FM doesn't "do" graphics as slickly as InDesign does. If all your labels are InDesign files, why not just maintain them only in InDesign? If you kept the text in FM, how were you thinking of getting it out to be ported into the InDesign files?

[T_Cox]

Our product labels include Directions for Use booklets that can approach 100 (Word doc) pages.  The content itself is complex and meant to satisfy Government requirements.  Some paragraphs constitute a topic by themselves.

I imagined FrameMaker would serve to manage canned information/topics that apply across a family of related products.  Is FrameMaker not used to perform the word processing?  I assumed that afterwards we could export the compiled text in a format that InDesign could import so that our art folks could apply the finishing touches (typesetting, graphics).

[Ian Proudfoot]

Are these product labels in any way related to the FDA's Structured Product Label requirements as used in the pharmaceutical industry? Or perhaps similar requirements for medical equipment?

That sort of work is exactly what FrameMaker does very well.

Ian

[T_Cox]

I'm speaking of pesticide labeling which someday the EPA could follow the example of the FDA's Structured Product Label requirements that you mention, especially if e-labeling is adopted by the agency.

Ian, can you elaborate --either here or in a private message-- on how FrameMaker is useful in a workflow for that industry?

Thanks in advance.

[peter_minneapolis]

T Cox wrote:

I'm speaking of pesticide labeling which someday the EPA could follow the example of the FDA's Structured Product Label requirements that you mention, especially if e-labeling is adopted by the agency.

Ian, can you elaborate --either here or in a private message-- on how FrameMaker is useful in a workflow for that industry?

Thanks in advance.

I suggest that you ask on the techwriters mailing list for information from writers who are working with workflows like this. Probably most use FrameMaker. It's likely that many have experience with government requirements, especially those that relate to translating the content into other languages, and into electronic formats like XML.

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The only time (that I can remember) when a group of writers dropped my FrameMaker training class, was in the introductory overview, when I introduced paragraph formats. The'd been using WordPerfect to create government-compliant labels. Like your situation, "layout" meant fitting everything required into the mandated size and shape. They used formats (aka styles) predominantly for setting font and text color. All other paragraph and character properties were ad-hoc formatting (aka overrides.) Think of stuffing the most possible people into a phone booth. Oh, wait. There are no phone booths anymore.<G> I think also, no WordPerfect.

The differences between those folks using WordPerfect and your folks using Word, include: theirs was a one-tool workflow from start to finish (perhaps output to PDF,) a team of folks well-experienced with the tool, and at that time, WordPerfect was quite stable. In your situation, ask the techwriters about the value of staying with Word (is it stable enough) or moving to FrameMaker and/or InDesign.

Those folks didn't buy into FrameMaker because it wouldn't have reduced their manual type-fitting effort.

Is there a compelling reason you need to output from InDesign?

More-advanced typographic control is the only advantage I can see to InDesign over FrameMaker. Text can be tweaked to finer degrees in InDesign. However, if your graphic folks spend time tweaking with every possible adjustment, the result's moderate difference may not make the work any more efficient.

If the government's requirements include exporting the content to XML, currently FrameMaker has the advantage here over InDesign.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Ok then, you didn't mention the size of the labels !! When I think about a lot of text on a label, I think of my cereal box - not a lot of words.

Yes, FM would be the tool for a long doc like that. Probably structured FM would be the way to go if your label content is highly organized and mostly repeatable. I'm not familiar with how ID can bring content in - I know that they don't "speak" directly with one another, so you would have to investigate what format ID can bring in.