[rescue] FrameMaker

[Nadine Miller]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-03-20 at 15:24, Joshua Boyd wrote:
> 
>>On Sat, Mar 20, 2004 at 03:32:02PM -0500, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>>
>>>Yay - another FrameMaker users out there? I just got FrameMaker 6 for
>>>Unix off eBay, can't wait to install it...
>>
>>I'd like to learn it.  I know they use framemaker for windows here at work.
> 
> 
> For me it was a worthwhile effort... Many large corp. engineering depts.
> use it, as does (did?) O'Reilly & Assoc. for book layout.
> 
> Once I learned FrameMaker, it was trivial to learn word processing
> software (MS Word, for example) - FrameMaker is really page layout
> software...
> 
> What is neat is that each format can lead to another... Title leads to
> by-line, which leads to Header, which leads to body. Everytime you press
> enter, you automatically move to the next format/style. It may sound
> odd, but the work just flows out, once you get used to it.

I'd rather use FrameMaker than just about anything else, really.
I use 5 under Classic on OS X.

That "neat" feature that you like so much is also possible in
MS Word, but it's not as seamless there.

Frame and Quark are, as far as I know, the only programs that
allow you to create character-level styles.  All the other programs
allow style overrides w/in paragraphs (i.e. you can make words
bold in the middle of a para in MS Word), but do not allow you
to create a style that can be applied to do this.

In large documents, particularly, using styles is essential when
the layout is not known during the content production phase.  Properly
constructing and using style sheets approaches the completely structured
paradigm of SGML and its relatives.  At the time that I was teaching
SGML, many of the companies were using Frame for just this purpose,
since FrameMaker has the MIF text output that can be translated to
SGML *if* your content producers adhere to the stylesheets.

Quark on the otherhand, allows plug-ins.  The company that I worked
for in Canada created a plug-in that would import SGML and apply
styles based on the DTD with the SGML.  We used this combination
to produce our slides and books for class.  Had to walk the walk--
so we ate our own dog food.

=Nadine=