Can this be done in WWP/MIF2Go?

["John Locke" <mail -at- freelock -dot- com>]

Hello, Whirlers...

Haven't posted in quite a while, been way too busy with several projects...


I'm starting a new one, and wanted to get an opinion from the
single-sourcing experts on the list.

The project is an SDK for an enterprise product. A series of XML files and
PL/SQL scripts configure a GUI and all sorts of configuration details. The
client primarily wants a web site, with a printable (PDF) version.

I've done this sort of thing a few times already, writing the source in
HTML, and using a series of PHP scripts to generate both the web site and
a single long page containing all of the content, which I then cut & paste
into Word, go through and clean it up, and print to PDF.

This time around, however, I'd like to make some effort to fit the result
into the documentation department's work flow. They primarily use
Framemaker, which I have a passing familiarity with, but not to the level
of creating templates, or using any of the output programs to generate a
web site.

So... I'm trying to choose which environment to author in... I'm very
partial to HTML/PHP, since I have a lot of web development experience and
can whip it out quickly. But can I get the same results with Frame?

My client likes the three-panel web site I showed him as an example of how
we could present the web documentation. Top frame has a banner, and a
horizontal list of high level topics (architectural overview, tutorial,
common tasks, reference, index, etc.). Each of these high-level topics
opens a different TOC in the left frame. Each TOC item links to either an
individual HTML content page, or a bookmark on a previous content page,
which opens in the right frame. The right frame, with all the content, has
a link to banish the frameset with a single click, or restore it with the
appropriate book/TOC in the other frames. A browse sequence links each
topic with a previous and next topic.

Can I set something complex like this up using Web Works Publisher or
MIF2GO and Frame? My scripts currently generate the TOC and browse
sequence from a single text file. Am I better off keeping my source in
HTML, or should I be looking at XML (docbook, perhaps)?

I have plenty of scripting experience, have worked with JavaScript, XSLT,
PHP, and SQL... but I only have a week or so to get the framework in place
before I need to focus on content... I need to make a recommendation in a
couple of days.

A related question: if I format text using CSS in a web browser, and cut &
paste the text into Frame, will Frame pick up the styles by class name,
and apply the formatting defined in the template for each style?

Thanks for your insight...

Cheers,

-- 
John Locke
Owner, Freelock, LLC
http://www.freelock.com



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