TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Before I begin, please let me prepend the caveat that I haven't used
FrameMaker extenisively in some time, and I've never used version 6,
so beware information that may not be true now.
Jeanne Hansen wrote:
> I need to design a book template in Frame to match an existing Word
> template. I have designed several templates in Word, so I am familiar
> with template design in general. However, this will be my first Frame
> template (Frame is pretty new to me although I have a good basic
> grasp). Do you have any words of wisdom for me before I get started?
> How is developing a Frame template different from developing a Word
> template? Are there any special features or pitfalls I should be aware
> of?
In some ways, designing your template will be easier. I find the Word
method of creating and updating styles using several dialog boxes to
be cumbersome and slow. Definining tags FrameMaker takes about as many
steps as defining Styles in Word, but since you're just using a single
dialog box with multiple tabs, it involves less work, IMHO.
One major thing to watch out for is that FrameMaker does not have the
ability to base newer tags on other tags. In Word, you can define each
tag as it differs from "Normal" (or whatever), so if you decide to change
the body size or font, that one change will ripple through your entire
template. In FrameMaker (AFAIK), each tag is defined separately, so it
is more difficult to make large scale changes. You can avoid this problem
by planning everything out before you begin, which, if you're recreating
a Word template, you probably already have.
Hope that helps,
--
Elliott C. "Eeyore" Evans eeyore+ -at- cmu -dot- edu
IPCC 01, the IEEE International Professional Communication Conference,
October 24-27, 2001 at historic La Fonda in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
CALL FOR PAPERS OPEN UNTIL MARCH 15. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
