Re: Framemaker Questions

Subject: Re: Framemaker Questions
From: Chris Despopoulos <cud -at- telecable -dot- es>
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 09:04:54 -0800

If you insist on going from Word to *unstructured* Maker, then to structured Maker...

What you will ultimately do is create a conversion table that changes the unstructured docs into structured docs. So you need to have at least a clue about the structure you intend. Of course your docs will break up into Sections and Subsections. Do you expect to have different types of XML sections with different names to correspond to your categories such as InstallationSection, HardwareProcedureSection, SoftwareProcedureSection, TroubleShootingProcedureSection, etc.? Or will they just be Sections that contain Procedures? If the former, then you should consider separate series of headings:

InstallSectH1, InstallSectH2, InstallSectH3
HdwareProcH1, HdwareProcH2, HdwareProcH3
...

That will make it easier to split things at the same section *level* into these different explicit categories. On the other hand, that type of a categorical split - one based on the *content* and not the *structure* - is generally considered a bad thing to express through the actual element names. That sort of division is better left to attributes. You need to look up in the Struct Dev Guide (Maker online manual) whether or not you can set attribute values through a conversion table. If so, then you may still want to use these sorts of divisions in your unstructured Maker files.

If, on the other hand, you just use consistent headings for the levels of sections, and let the content express the categories, then you can suck H1, H2, H3, etc. into different levels of section, and leave it at that.

I get the feeling I'm rambling... Need... More.... Coffee! Read the Structured Application Developer's guide that comes with Maker (well, look it over - especially the section on conversion tables.) And you should begin to immerse yourself in XML - design strategies and the like. And don't discount the suggestion that you use an existing DTD. Whatever you do, the more you know about the final goal (XML), the better your initial decisions will be.






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