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.
Subject:Re: Pagemaker to Framemaker conversion From:"Dick Margulis " <margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 8 Oct 2002 15:39:54 -0400
Peter,
"From scratch" isn't really an issue here. The artwork in the PageMaker publications _should_ (if they were created by anyone who understood how PM works) all be links to external files. Those external files should be easy enough to place on FrameMaker pages.
The text in PageMaker consists of "stories." A story may be a single figure legend, a single running head, or the text of an entire chapter. You can determine that by having the selection tool active (the black arrow in the tool palette) and selecting all (Ctrl-A) on a spread. The end of a text block has a windowshade handle. If the handle has a plus sign, there is more to the story. If the handle is empty, you are looking at the end of the story.
Switch to the text tool (the capital A tool). Place the text cursor inside a story. File > Export > Text. Select the RTF option and select to export tags. You can then create Frame styles that use the same style names as the PM styles. I'm not positive the tags will be converted, so you may end up exporting RTF without tags--you'll have to experiment with settings. Repeat for all stories (that's the tedious part).
I think that's about as much as you can do in terms of conversion. Maybe someone else knows a better way.
Dick
Peter O <coolsen -at- attglobal -dot- net> wrote:
>I have
>several manuals that were created in PageMaker. My company would now like
>to convert them to Framemaker. These manuals are photo intensive and have
>lots of charts and drawings on disconnected pages which must remain that way
>because of the material covered. Does anyone have suggestions on how best
>to make the conversion short of recreating the manuals from scratch?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
All-new RoboHelp X3 is now shipping! Get single sourcing, print-quality
documentation, conditional text and much more, in the most monumental
release ever. Save $100! Order online at http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l
Buy ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 6.0, the most powerful SINGLE SOURCE HELP
AUTHORING TOOL for MS Word. SAVE $100 on the full version and $50 on the
upgrade. Offer ends 10/31/2002 (code: DTH102250). http://www.componentone.com/d2hlist1002
---
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.