Re: How to Learn FrameMaker

[Martha J Davidson <editrix -at- SLIP -dot- NET>]

>How did you learn FrameMaker?

I learned FrameMaker in the very early days by <*gasp> reading the manual.
At that time there were many fewer features than there are now, but the
basic concepts and philosophy were already established.  Then I became an
alpha tester for version 2.0, and learned about the changes (more than one
master page, the introduction of reference pages and character styles, GUI
interface to book files, and a number of other things) by reading the
release notes and playing with the new features by applying them to my
current projects.

Then, when tables and conditional text were introduced in Frame 3.0, I
could explore them, based on a solid foundation with the already existing
program.  Again, I did it by reading about them--at that point, they only
issued a "New Features" manual, packaged with the Frame 2.0 user's guide.

I realize that it's a bit different now, to plow through everything that's
part of Frame, but I think the easiest way to absorb it is to understand
the basic paradigm:  that document design is based on page styles,
paragraph styles, and character styles, and it's best to create documents
from established templates rather than making local changes.  In other
words, to treat Frame primarily as a document design tool with text
processing capabilities, rather than expecting it to function as a word
processor that also lets you format pages.

I don't know what 3rd party books are available, but if you learn by
reading documentation, and can get a copy of "Using FrameMaker 5.x" before
Adobe edited the guts out of it, you can probably get most of what you need
from there.  If you're familiar with the principles of typography and any
other desktop publishing software, the conceptual leaps will probably not
be out of reach.

That's been my experience, anyway.

martha, who enjoys RTFMing when she can

--
Martha Jane {Kolman | Davidson}
Dances With Words
mailto:editrix -at- slip -dot- net

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
 If I am only for myself, what am I?
 If not now, when?"
        --Hillel, "Mishna, Sayings of the Fathers 1:13"


 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=