Where do I start?

Report · Feb 09, 2009

I just downloaded the 30-day trial version of FrameMaker 9. Our company is thinking of buying it for our technical documentation. I have never used it before and am finding it very user-unfriendly. There are no free video tutorials available. I imported a Microsoft Word document and was trying to set up a master page and fix the page numbering with odd/even page numbers. I followed the instructions (or so I thought) and all my page numbers were "4". I am a little frustrated and am having second thoughts about this program. I thought Word was difficult to manipulate for technical documents but I can't even get started with FrameMaker. If anyone knows of a good video tutorial or even good hard copy step-by-step instructions--not the user guide, I would sure appreciate it.

Report · Feb 09, 2009

This same question was recently asked on another forum. I am a former user of FrameMaker and have been getting reacquainted after some time away from it. I found that the learning curve on FrameMaker really isn't any harder than most of the other software packages that I have used. They all have their little idiosyncrasies that you have to adjust to.

Since version 9 was just released (in the last couple of months), I don't know if you will find any non-adobe created books on the latest release. However, I would think books on versions 7 and 8 would give you a good foundation.

I saw a couple of people mention the following:

O'Keefe and Loring, "FrameMaker 7: The Complete Reference",
ISBN 0-07-222361-8, published by Osborne/McGraw Hill, which has now
been republished as "Publishing Fundamentals: FrameMaker 7", ISBN
0970473338, at: http://www.scriptorium.com/books/fm7/index.html

They also have an excellent book on Frame 8, "Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8", ISBN 9780970473349, at: http://www.scriptorium.com/books/fm8/unstrfm8.html

In addition, they offer their workbooks for free on a wiki: http://wiki.scriptorium.com/tiki-index.php

Another user suggested Classroom in a Book, Framemaker 7.0.

I personally haven't used any of these, but you might give them a look.

Report · Feb 09, 2009

I have been using FrameMaker 8.0 for almost a year. When I started, I found the Classroom in a Book very helpful for learning the basics. The only copy I could find at the time was for version 6.0, and even though it was 2 versions old, it was still very applicable, user-friendly and helpful. I have also found the workbooks at scriptiorium helpful. Those are the only 2 sources other than the user guide I have used so far.

Good luck,
Janice

Report · Feb 09, 2009

... and fwiw, importing a Word file and trying to clean it up is something that even long-term FrameMaker users can find challenging <g> Try starting from scratch, though you can use Edit > Paste special to copy content in as Text or Unicode text without any "problematic" formatting.<br /><br />Good luck with the book recommendations! and with FrameMaker - well worth struggling up that initial learning curve, 'cos the view from the top is fantastic.