RE: REquest for advice on Workflow & Tools

["Beilby, Margaret" <MBeilby -at- ebuilt -dot- com>]

<<My question is simple: can a mixed world of Word-to-Frame not only work, 
but make sense? I do appreciate the helpful comments.>>

Yes, it can. I work in such an environment. All my documents are in
FrameMaker but much of the source material comes to me in Word files in
varying formats and from various and assorted individuals. I simply convert
the Word files to RTF and import them in FM, where I make all formatting and
editing changes and add additional information as it becomes available. 

It make sense in my situation because the company already has Word and
doesn't want to spend a lot of money to provide FM for everyone (not to
mention training everyone to use it). Additionally, our clients may require
us to provide Word files along with the the PDF and FM files or may even
require that all their documents be created in Word. 

I'm not really too picky about what format the source material comes in as
long as I can convert it to RTF or .TXT. If the source material comes from
developers, I often suggest they use their favorite text editor and simply
give me a .TXT file. They like this a lot. Sometimes the information they
provide is in an e-mail message that I convert this to .TXT and import.
There are lots of ways to do this. Much of the time, however, the source
materials require so much editing and rewriting that it's often faster to
rekey the text than to import and edit in FM or Word or whatever.      

<<In regards to Visio, I need to be able to allow writers to incorporate 
Visio drawings into their documents.>>

Our process is to save the Visio drawings as .TIF, .GIF, or .JPG files and
import them into FM. Importing Visio files directly causes too many
problems. I also ask the person supplying the source material to also
provide the native Visio (.VSD) file.  

Thanks,

Margaret



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