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FM Formats

One could argue that the key to effective use of FrameMaker is:

• to have a bullet-resistant style/format guide.

• to adhere to the formats defined.

• to minimize format overrides.

When single-sourcing the FM files into other output formats, such as HTML, the enforced use of the style guide plays an even greater role. Everything accomplished in FM needs to be mapped in some manner to an appropriate construct in the output medium. Moreover, online output imposes requirements for both consistency and flexibility on the styles and formats.

Generally, the formats employed in a FrameMaker document tailor it for print or PDF purposes. When exporting the document into, say, HTML, the export tool needs to be told what the topic boundaries are.

Our style guide has:

• Five (5) paragraph formats that define the chapter chunks:

• TitleChapter

• TitleAppendix

• TitleFront

TitleIndex

• TitleIntro

• Three (3) paragraph formats that define the section chunks:

• Head1

• Head2

• Head3

All eight (8) of these paragraph formats are used in the generation of the Table of Contents. Moreover, they are used to define sections that become stand-alone HTML files when exported.

In other words, these FrameMaker paragraph formats can be followed by any number of any other paragraph format. Only when another of these eight (8) formats appears is a new HTML document created. The text used with these eight formats help determine the HTML file name and subsequent hyperlinks.

On occasion, these Title or Head formats are followed by only a single sentence or paragraph, which is acceptable in print/PDF but results in a very small HTML topic. To address this, three additional “keep with previous” (Kwp) paragraph formats are defined.

• Head1Kwp (=Head1)

• Head2Kwp (=Head2)

• Head3Kwp (=Head3)

These HeadnKwp have the exact same definitions as their associated Head format and are used in the creation of the Table of Contents. The only difference is that these HeadnKwp formats are purposely missing from any definitions used by the HTML export tool for HTML file splitting. When a HeadnKwp is used in place of the Headn, it does not cause the forking of a new HTML file.

The intend of these additional (duplicate) paragraphs is to give the technical writer more control over the HTML file size and topic chunking. When the technical writer has nearly completed the manual for print/PDF generation, they can go through the FM book and determine which sections are small and could be combined with the next or previous section. They change the Headn format at the boundary between two sections to its associated HeadnKwp.

Note: Your format names may be different than those that Voyant uses. The point of this discussion is tip on how the HTML export tool can be told not to generate new HTML files.



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Open-Source tools compliments of Voyant Technologies, Inc. and Glenn C. Maxey.
01/13/2003

TP Tools v2-00-0a

# tpt-hug-02