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Subject:Re: Transporting graphics from Frame/Word to HTML From:"Wayne J. Douglass" <wayned -at- VERITY -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 22 May 1997 11:12:03 -0700
At 01:30 PM 5/22/97 +0000, Diane Burke wrote:
>If I understand correctly, the graphics for HTML must be in JPEG or GIF
>format. When you create a graphic in Frame using their tools, they are not
>in an HTML recognizable format and the Frame conversion to HTML function is
>not currently able to do this for you. I also have this problem - manuals
>full of graphics which are a combination of BMPs (usually screen grabs of
>dialogue boxes) annotated with Frame drawing tools. A quick and easy
>procedure to convert to JPEG or GIF would be wonderful.
>
We use Quadralay's Webworks, an industrial-strength HTML converter, to dump
to HTML. It converts embedded FrameMaker graphics *without* writing either a
JPEG or GIF file. Don't ask me how it does it because I was not the writer
who got under the hood to make it work. I suspect it diddles with the MIF
file to produce HTML. GIF or JPEG files imported by reference in our books
are handled easily (we capture screens to GIF because we know we're going
online). We even use thumbnails of large screen captures as anchors so that
the reader can jump to the full-size version if they really want to know
what the image looks like. All this requires considerable set-up using the
byzantine Webworks interface, but the output is excellent and predictable.
We spot check check the links, etc. after conversion, and we are never
disappointed (assuming you have set it up correctly in the first place - the
damned software does exactly what we tell it to do, not what we intended to do).
However, annotations of imported graphics files created by the FrameMaker
drawing tools are lost in the translation. Since I have nothing but contempt
for the drawing tools in the first place and never use them, it's no big
deal to me.
--Wayne Douglass
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