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> In my current incarnation on this new product start up, we are already
> pretty invested in Framemaker 5.5 (on Windows NT). Does anyone know of any
> similar tool sets available for controlling and automating the
> documentation development process for Frame? Also I would appreciate
> hearing of any reader experiences related to modularizing and re-using
> documentation.
Frame's ability to create books out of any combination of files makes it one
off-the-shelf answer for this problem. If you have chapters A, B, C, and D for
customer X, and chapters A, B, D, and E for customer Y, and A, C, D, and F for
customer Z, Frame can handle them all. Simply create one book file with A, B, D, and D
and print it; then create another book file with the next combination you need. You
can make the chapters as big or small as you need them to be towork with your modular
organization.
On the other hand, if you want to take modularity even further, you can also use
Frame's conditional text option to tag selected pieces of a file for this
configuration or that. If you use colors to differentiate the conditional settings
while you're constructing the files, be sure to re-set the colors to black before you
print, or you'll get greyed text wherever you used color.
(Lessons learned from using conditional text to create both print and online Help
files from a single file.)
