Carolinas Framemaker Users Network

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May 1998 Newsletter Carolinas Contents Developing FrameMaker Templates 2 Using Conditional Text for Maintaining Surveys 6 Credits Contributors Leslie Flowers FrameMaker Sarah O’Keefe Editing & Layout Sarah O’Keefe Alan Pringle Carolinas FrameMaker Users Group Officers Rose Britton, President Sarah O’Keefe,Vice-President & Publicity Terry Smith, Treasurer This newsletter was produced using FrameMaker 5.5 on a Power Macintosh. Frame and FrameMaker are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems, Inc. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners and are used for identification purposes only. Meeting Information Users Our next meeting is: Thursday, June 4, 1998, 6:00 p.m. Network Mallett Technology 100 Park Drive, Suite 204 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 Please RSVP to Sarah O’Keefe ([email protected]), so that we can give our hosts a rough estimate of attendance. Check the Carolinas FUN web site (http://www.scriptorium.com/fun.html) for the agenda and directions to the meeting place. May 1998 Developing FrameMaker Templates by Sarah O’Keefe A template is a framework. It does not itself provide much content, but it gives you a starting point. At the most basic level, you could think of a child’s coloring book as being full of templates. Each page provides an outline drawing, and children can fill the outlines with any colors they want. FrameMaker templates are much more sophisticated, but they use the same idea. In FrameMaker, templates provide the framework of paragraph formats, character formats, page layouts, and much more. You can use the structure in the template as a foundation for the document you create. FrameMaker’s strong emphasis on structure provides you with tools to automate and accelerate your document development. For example, once you create a table format, you can use that table format over and over in your document. You can insert a table that matches the format of the first table you created and be confident that the tables will have the same look and feel. You can also make changes to the various catalogs. When you do so, you can choose to update every item in your document that uses that particular format. This makes global updating very simple. Creating a document “the right way”—setting up the appropriate catalogs in your template—will save you time, even if the document is relatively short. The longer and more complicated the document, the more time you’ll save (and the more aggravation you’ll avoid) by working with a template. Developing an Effective Template Developing an effective template means that you need to think carefully about your document’s requirements and then take advantage of FrameMaker’s power to automate the design you want as much as possible. Here are some key issues to keep in mind: • Use styles wherever possible. Take the time to develop styles for your tables and page layouts in addition to the standard paragraph formats. Your efforts will pay off when you reuse the styles over and over again. • Let system variables maintain your headers and footers. Instead of typing the chapter or section title onto your master page, create an appropriate running header/footer variable. 2 Carolinas FrameMaker Users Network • Consider using conditional text for multiple versions of a document. Instead of creating two versions of a document for two similar products, use conditional text to hide information that applies to only one of the products. • You cannot restart page numbering within a single file. If you need to restart page numbering, use multiple files and combine them in a book file. • Use the Next Paragraph tag feature in the Paragraph Designer. I usually specify that a heading paragraph is followed by a body paragraph and that a step 1 paragraph is followed by a step 2. Of course, you can set the paragraph tag manually after you create the paragraph. But setting the most likely next paragraph as the default is an If you are designing a enhancement that template users template that many will appreciate. • Document your template. people will use, document how to use the template. If you are designing a template that many people will use (for example, a departmental template for a particular type of document), document how to use the template. In the “official template file,” briefly explain the various catalogs in the document. Explain when and how to use each one; for example, “Use the Reviewers conditional text tag for queries to your reviewers.” Developing Templates for HTML If you plan to publish your document in HTML, there are some additional considerations: • FrameMaker has many more features than HTML. You will probably need to make some design compromises. For example, you could use side heads in your FrameMaker document, but HTML does not support side heads. You could probably get the same effect by using an HTML table, but this would involve a lot of manual tweaking of the HTML. Similarly, your document’s headers and footers will not be converted to HTML. 3 May 1998 • Page numbers are irrelevant in HTML. This is important when you consider how to set up your crossreferences. FrameMaker cross-references are converted to HTML hyperlinks, but including the page number in the cross-reference is not necessary because the page number is meaningless in HTML. A crossreference that simply provides the heading (which will be blue and underlined to indicate a link) is an excellent cue to the reader. • The table of contents and index will be hyperlinked. Readers will be able to click on an item in the table of contents or index and jump to that part of the document. With this in mind, you may want to provide a more detailed table of contents in your online HTML document than you do in your printed material. • Implement the navigation bar. Most well-designed HTML materials use a navigation bar. You can use the navigation bar to provide quick access to reference items, such as a glossary. This may eliminate the need to define terms within your document. Most Frame-to-HTML converters let you define navigation bars at the top and bottom of your pages. • Online documents are less linear. Keep in mind that your readers will probably take advantage of the hyperlinks and jump around in the document. This means that you cannot assume that the person reading Chapter Three actually read Chapters One and Two. But you can solve this problem by providing cross-references. Instead of writing, “as discussed earlier, chocolate is an excellent source of happiness,” you could write, “as discussed in Chapter Two, chocolate is an excellent source of happiness.” Then, provide a link from the words “Chapter Two” to the material in Chapter Two. Your reader can decide whether to jump over to Chapter Two and read about the wonders of chocolate. • HTML works best with highly structured documents. Be consistent in your use of paragraph styles. Avoid format overrides— any custom “tweaking” that you do on individual paragraphs will probably be lost when you convert to HTML. Developing Templates for Adobe Acrobat Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files offer you some of the advantages of online materials, such as hyperlinking, while preserving the layout and formatting of your printed document. If you are developing materials for Acrobat 4 Carolinas FrameMaker Users Network distribution, here are some issues to consider: • Use the navigation aids that Acrobat provides. Make sure that you set up hyperlinks for your table of contents, index, and other generated files. Use Acrobat’s bookmarking feature to provide an additional means of navigation. • Color is free in Acrobat. Printing a manual in color is often prohibitively expensive, but using Acrobat to create an online manual in color costs no more than creating a black-and-white version. Acrobat files can display color. Printing a manual in color is often prohibitively expensive, but using Acrobat to create an online manual in color costs no more than creating a black-and-white version. If you apply color carefully, you can make your document more usable and more interesting—but don’t overdo it. • Acrobat is a compromise between print and online media. Keep in mind that many of your readers may want to print the Acrobat files. You need to find a balance between setting up an optimum online display and preserving the file’s readability when printed. Even in a world of impossibly tight deadlines, taking the time to plan and develop a template is wise. A template tailored to project needs can increase productivity and, best of all, prevent a few headaches down the road. Personal Profile Sarah O’Keefe is president and founder of Scriptorium Publishing Services, Inc., and an Adobe Certified Expert in FrameMaker. She provides FrameMaker training and consulting, and is the Vice President & Publicity Manager for the Carolinas FUN. You can reach Sarah at [email protected]. Company Profile Scriptorium Publishing Services, Inc. provides expert technical communication services to high-tech companies. Our experienced, technically oriented staff offers writing, editing, training, and consulting in any area, on any level, and within any scope. We also conduct regular FrameMaker training classes that are informative, fast-paced, and very popular with students. 5 May 1998 Using Conditional Text for Maintaining Surveys (or, How to Lower Your Blood Pressure) by Leslie Flowers In our pre-FrameMaker days at Analytical Sciences, we maintained five nearly identical surveys, all of which were continually edited. Add to the constant edits the fact that our pre-Frame formatting in WordPerfect had a way of magically adjusting itself, it seemed, just to make my blood boil. After each round of editing, no two documents ever printed out the same. I cringed when I saw a change had to be made, albeit minor, to those documents. There was a lot of unproductive time spent on one small part of our workload. Enter FrameMaker 5.0 and Kay Ethier of Mallett Technologies. After training, our company hit Kay between the eyes with this complicated survey. Now, we thought, let's see what Kay's really got. We showed her the types of changes we were making to these surveys, where information was the same, and what it took to edit each individually. She walked us through the use of conditional text so that: • • • All surveys always print out the same (what a concept!). Edits take 15 minutes instead of 90 minutes. My temperament has improved! Conditional text in FrameMaker is a real time- (and money-) saver. Our surveys go to different audiences in the community, but they basically say the same thing. Now that we've set them up with conditional text, text is assigned different colors so it is easy to identify which of the five surveys is being edited. Of course, you have to be careful to have all the conditional text showing when you edit, for obvious reasons! Conditional text is only one small bit of FrameMaker, but the use of this feature has surely saved our office at least one additional week of production time—and this is just for the pilot study! 6 What’s conditional text? Using conditional text, you can maintain two or more versions of the same document in one file. By assigning conditional tags to different parts of the document and then hiding and showing the conditionally tagged text, you change the information that is displayed in your document. The June meeting will include a presentation on conditional text. Carolinas FrameMaker Users Network Personal Profile Leslie Flowers is Production Coordinator for Analytical Sciences, Inc. (ASI) and has been word processing since 1971 (yes, they had it back then). She began with IBM's Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter (MTST), graduated to IBM's Mag Card I, then II, worked through DEC’s try at word processing hardware and software, and then on to proficiency with WordPerfect and Word. She moved from the scientific world to the architectural world of CAD (computer-aided drafting) and then back to science in Durham with ASI, where she leads a production team that services all divisions of ASI. In addition to desktop publishing, she is proficient with technical drawing packages and project tracking software and is editor of the company-wide intranet page. You can contact Leslie at [email protected]. Company Profile Formed in 1983, Analytical Sciences, Inc. (ASI) is an award-winning contract research organization dedicated to furthering knowledge and improving methods in the health and environmental sciences. With its headquarters in Durham, ASI provides scientific and technical support services as well as expert consulting to the Federal government and private sector. ASI also provides expertise in clinical trials services, health communication, information technology, public health and environmental research, and statistical analysis. . Frame® is hard. Life is short. We can help. Register now for our two-day, fast-paced FrameMaker course, June 25 and 26 in RTP Scriptorium Publishing Services, Inc. 507 Petty Road, Sanford, NC 27330 919-775-7147 or [email protected] http://www.scriptorium.com 7