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I'm not an XML expert, but I understand from discussions with XML people
that Framemaker is not an option if you seriously intend to work in XML.
Framemaker's strength is formatting and that is the reasons some XML vendors
use FM as an silent background formatting engine - but never use it as an
XML editor. Other vendors rely on other formatting engines, such as RenderX,
Antenna House or FOP.
At FLIR we are converting all documentation to XML at the moment and it
makes the consultants sigh alot when it comes to the XML that FM outputs by
default if you use the "Save as XML..." command. Admittedly, some of these
problems can be solved with a tweaked filter.
The product solution we have settled upon after having evaluated different
options for two years looks very promising so far. It is based on a low-cost
XML editor and a quite powerful - also low-cost - file-based configuration &
version management software.
I plan to post a review of this solution on the list in a couple of months,
since I think there must be alot of companies out there (with, say, less
than an output of 10,000 unique pages per year) for whom a large scale XML
solution is out the question because of the investment and a limited staff,
and for whom an XML editor without a CM software is also out of the question
since you still need powerful configuration & version management.
Also, if you do alot of translations, you'd be happy to know that TRADOS'
feature XTranslate means that alot of the differencing algorithms that
previously have been implemented in XML documentation management solutions -
and thus increased the price - can now be carried out in TRADOS, which also
makes sense.
Mats Broberg
Technical Documentation Manager
FLIR Systems AB
> Hi all,
>
> Is anyone out there using FrameMaker 7.0 to write round-trip
> XML documentation? Would you be willing to share your
> experiences and/or opinions about this?
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