Converting framemaker file to indesign

This is a feature would be genuinely useful to an InDesign author who works on documents whose content changes almost constantly. In earlier ID releases, master-page text frames could do the same thing; essentially Primary Text Frames are a new name on an existing feature. It searches paragraphs that have the feature, and applies specific named character styles according to author-defined rules. For example, it can apply a distinctive character style to the first so-many words of a paragraph, or from the beginning of the paragraph to a specific character, like a colon, and apply other styles to specified portions within the remainder of the paragraph.

This automation saves tons of manual effort, and I blush to have overlooked it. No, you are absolutely right about the need for InDesign to become increasingly aware of the position of a paragraph inside a story. While ID does have some important features in the Keep Options dialog box, it needs far more.

Your example of a list is a great one: the same paragraph needs different formatting depending where it is in the list. Similarly, a paragraph should look different in the middle of a section vs. Currently, we have to make lots of paragraph styles, where we should just require one, with Location conditions. Nested Styles is an incredibly complex feature. Applying only within a Paragraph simplifies it a lot — there are no external dependencies and we are essentially applying extra Character Styles on top of what may or may not be already there.

Applying the same concept to paragraph styles, where you would change the style applied based on neighboring context, would be a lot, lot more messy for us. Those complexities, and the limited nature of the target audience, results in us not seriously considering it. Perhaps a more successful tack is to narrow down the needed functionality to the bare minimum and not compare too closely to Frame.

We need a model that works for ID. The best I heard some years back was to target specific attributes, such as space before and space after, which would take on alternate values based one context. Of course we could have invested in making a decent font, and we would have loved to converse with the illustrious Mr. We just love ingesting InDesign templates made by people who know nothing about code and automating the mapping of their InDesign objects designed with artistry and typographical aesthetics we will never glean in a hundred lifetimes to data with code.

Code alone only goes so far. I have maintained a comparatively in-depth comparison chart between InDesign, FrameMaker, and QuarkXPress on my website for about 6 years now. The latest is available here at this link. But, you are correct in describing the larger picture. Interestingly, the Next Paragraph Style feature is a taste of that ideal world. The larger point is that a structured document environment is required for jobs that need intelligence beyond a single paragraph, or a selection of paragraphs.

Even FrameMaker requires a structured project to perform the necessary constant context monitoring, and apply the rules. To get to this level requires several magnitudes of new programming, PLUS several magnitudes of training for the authors who would work in the structured environment. David, I know you wrote your comment more than 3 years back but I see your resource is no longer available.

Is the link just broken or have you removed the PDF completely? Anyone familar with Frame gets it immediately, but ID customers have never seen it before and so, seemingly, find it complicated. I think it is because they are inclined to hand position where things go — especially outside the TextFrame — so having the composer do it feels somewhat awkward. Others who might think of looking into TeK will save time.

The difficulty of working with TeK illuminates how skilled with it those folks who declared they were dropping because of , and were returning to TeK, for its superior suitability to their needs and abilities to use it. In an way, this answers the question with which Peter started the article: the minority who are inclined to want strong control over the logical structure of documents and whose publications would benefit from such control should use FM; others should probably use ID and will no doubt feel more comfortable doing so.

But, this calls into question the usefulness of ID as a hub for both print and digital publishing, despite our being able to establish logical order after the fact by anchoring frames to a point in the text flow. We employ similar transforms for other outputs, again with a non-InDesign source. There are some simple cases where it makes sense to export from InDesign to some sort of ePub or HTML format, but when Adobe punted on making InDesign a structured authoring tool they really left it as more of a rendition engine than anything else, at least for those serious about multi-channel publishing.

I am a technical writer trying to learn Framemaker for the first time, and I can hardly believe the amount of time I waste searching back and forth for acronyms that are these so called standards. They are referenced constantly as acronyms. It would be funny if it wasn't so ironic, that as communicators we can't communicate quickly and simply. I understand the need for consistency, structure, formatting, but enough is enough.

I think about how much work we all could get done if they stopped introducing new "standards" and just said what they need to say. I think each document user manual or online article should include a single page, if it would all fit, of all the acronyms used so that it could be printed and referenced QUICKLY. Wasting more and more time every day. I welcome all comments from technical writers, instructional designers, developers, and anyone else that has some relevant input, and could maybe offer some solutions to simplify this world of communications.

FM is the WordPerfect of document design programs. Further, practically speaking: has anyone tried to take a native FM file to a printer for output? Thank the Adobe gods that Acrobat was invented! Technical colleges or even high schools rarely — to the point of never — offer FM courses, practice or experience, though they regularly offer the same for ID and the other Adobe CS products like Photoshop.

In other words: there are more kinds of jobs available for skilled ID users than FM users and, based on personal experience, the pay is about the same. Technical documents almost always need to be revised. FM is good at this. FrameMaker is not an efficient or advanced page-layout program, though it is capable at that task. Even though the version you used, FM7, is quite old, it does have the ability to create usable non-printing ruler guides which can be displayed or hidden.

In my opinion, the premise from which your opinion arises is the issue here. That company was not using the right tool for the job. In addition, if you were new to FM, congratulate yourself on using it successfully for your purpose. Experienced FM users probably would have had a less-troublesome time. Looking at it from the reverse angle, as noted in the article and responses to it, InDesign was not a capable long-document creation tool until suitable features were added and enhanced in version CS4 and later.

Planning for efficiency in revision cycles usually is not considered when attractive page layout is the primary goal. From the truly old days, the early s, even before Acrobat, FrameMaker has been able to output PostScript files, which have been suitable for print vendors.

The Tech Comm Suit has a later version of FrameMaker, but its improvements and enhancements do not include any changes to its page-layout behavior. In addition InDesign offers tools to create forms with interactive links and buttons.

This is great stuff. Conversion is charged only upon saving the document - if the conversion result is not acceptable, do not save the document and there will be no charge. It's only necessary to save converted and approved documents. Page credit is available in the following pre-paid coupons: Page credit for pages: 35 EUR 0.

Monthly plan purchasing can be set up for larger volume users - please contact sales dtptools. Thus, the need for this service. Specify the InDesign format to what you want to transfer your files. Our goal is to keep your formatting and fonts in place.

If we cannot do this, we will let you know before the transfer takes place. PageMaker 6. We own the legal rights to the use of this software. All of the software used has a valid Adobe serial number. We have been using this software since its inception to the Macintosh or Windows platforms. Calendar Simply send a request to cshanktype gmail. It's free, with a pay-per-page charge; you buy quantities with an account that ticks off each converted page.

When you run out, you pay again. It's sort of a combination of a phone-minutes card, and a photocopy machine that logs usage by operator, department, etc. The conversion is quite close visually, page-by-page, but because of differences between how FM and ID work, editing the ID file may reflow the content unpredictably in some places.

Choose your authoring formats and get any output you may need. Previous by Author : RE: Do manuals have to be boring? Copyright , INKtopia Limited.