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Subject:Re: Horrors of Upgrades From:Tim Altom <taltom -at- SIMPLYWRITTEN -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 18 Aug 1998 10:13:21 -0500
I imagine from the number of postings and private messages I get that you're
not anywhere near being the only one with this question about Frame.
Those who came to FrameMaker in the last two years or so may not know this,
but Frame's original home wasn't Windows, but UNIX. When it was ported to
Mac and Wintel, its paradigm came along. Because Frame's code wasn't
originally designed for RTF conversion, its RTF capabilities are almost
universally considered to be substandard, and its WinHelp RTF is just about
nowhere. You're right that Frame is awesomely powerful, but WinHelp wasn't
on its radar scope for many years. Frame shops like ours have learned not to
rely on the built-in filters.
To fill the gap, third-party developers have worked up marvelous filters to
convert MIFs to various other things. Chief among these for WinHelp is
MIF2RTF from Omni Systems. We use it extensively and with proper use of
FrameMaker features such as conditional text and xrefs, you can almost
completely design and build a help file in Frame, right alongside the print
version. Then you can save as a MIF, run the MIF through the filter, and
compile the resulting RTF straight away. We don't, to be honest, because I'm
never comfortable without taking a peek at the RTF I'm going to compile.
My personal advice is to use Frame as an authoring tool and use third-party
filters like MIF2RTF and Quadralay Webworks to produce good, clean files
from the FrameMaker parent document. The third-party filters are usually
robust, intricately programmable, and highly customizable. Of course, you
have to invest time and money in them, but if you do outputs often, it's
well worth both prices, in my view.
>In FrameMaker versions up to 5.1.1, any RTF exported files retained the
tags in the exported file. In Version 5.5, all the tags disappear, leaving
each paragraph with the Normal tag with any characteristic fonts, spacings,
and the like appearing as added attributes per paragraph. Consequently, it
becomes necessary to re-tag the entire export file when preparing WinHelp
projects, thereby adding a considerable amount of time to production, one
our organization cannot afford to bear.
>
>Does anyone out there know of a way to export an RTF file from FrameMaker
5.5 that retains all the format tags? I'm asking several sources
simultaneously because we need swift answers. The sooner you reply, the
better for us.
