RE: Single Sourcing With Adobe Framemaker 7.1

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Joseph wrote: 
 
> I am a technical writer working for an IT company.  I am searching for
an
> easy method and/or documentation for single sourcing with Framemaker
7.1. I
> am looking for "true" single sourcing, not an ad hoc method that uses
> conditional text, different books, variables, and text insets.

There is nothing "ad hoc" about using the features you disdain. If by
"true" single sourcing, you mean that every single word of the source
document appears in both print/PDF and online help -- well, I think
that's putting an elegant process ahead of the quality of the outputs.
 
> I am aware that Framemaker 8.0 has full DITA supported and could
easily buy
> it through my company. However, at this time my understanding is that
8.0
> will not save as pdf if headers are cross referenced. Therefore, I am
> restricted to 7.1.

I'm not sure what you mean, but I don't think you mean "headers are
cross referenced." Headers are the repeating elements at the top of a
page -- the counterpart to footers -- that in FM are defined on the
master pages. One doesn't cross-reference objects on master pages in any
version of FM. 

Did you mean _headings_? They're just paragraph objects, so if xrefs to
them caused problems with PDFing, then xrefs and/or PDFing would be
seriously broken. I can't imagine that's the case.

Maybe you could explain both your single sourcing goal and your concern
with FM 8 more clearly?

Richard


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------






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