Converting Legacy Documents to FrameMaker

WebSeminar: “Converting Legacy Documents to FrameMaker”
Date: Thursday, March 29th, 2007
Time: 11:00 am – 1:00 pm PST
Where: Your desktop
Click [here] to register
Cost: $149.00  

Overview

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We all have Microsoft Word on our computers and are lulled into the belief that it can work on any type of document. MS Word, the omnipresent word processing tool with many powerful features, is the hammer; however, not everything is a nail. Adobe FrameMaker is created specifically for those who create large and complex documents typical of technical publishing. Multiple-page tables, a high number of embedded graphics and cross-references to external documents are among the features in high-page count documents that FrameMaker radically streamlines. Streamlining these processes saves you both time and money in creating your documents and in the subsequent translation and localization of those documents.

Even without the available benefits of XML and structured editing, regular FrameMaker is a better choice for complex technical manuals than MS Word. ENLASO has helped a number of customers migrate from products such as PageMaker, Quark, MS Word and even InDesign into FrameMaker in order to streamline authoring and to reduce turnaround time on the publishing phase of major translation projects. Because inefficiencies in your current publishing environment are later multiplied by the number of target languages a document is translated into, you can easily calculate the savings that result from migration to FrameMaker.

Whether you are already using FrameMaker and have inherited legacy data in another format, or you are contemplating a move to FrameMaker, this two-hour WebSeminar will be highly useful to you.

Purpose

This online course covers all aspects of migrating legacy documents (mainly Microsoft Word) to unstructured FrameMaker. Despite FrameMaker’s relatively strong MS Word import filters, converted legacy documents do require touchup and repair. This course focuses on best practices for converting and finishing documents imported into FrameMaker from MS Word.

Target Audience

This interactive class is intended for FrameMaker users who inherit legacy files in MS Word format from other departments, and also for MS Word users who are contemplating an upgrade to FrameMaker. A free one-hour overview of FrameMaker will be held the day before the course, for any participants who are not familiar with FrameMaker.

Course Benefits

• A free one-hour overview of FrameMaker will be held the day before the course, for any participants who are not familiar with FrameMaker and for those interested in a short refresher session
• Attendees are invited to submit a short “problem” MS Word document to the instructor before the WebSeminar, so real-world examples can be used during the online training.
• All students will receive a free FrameMaker plug-in, which will automatically take the first row of every table and convert it into a header row
• Each attendee will get a white paper “Best Practices for converting Word documents to FrameMaker”
• Each attendee will have access to all training materials and a recording of the live class

Course Outline

• Initial document analysis
• Prepping Word docs that use a minimum of paragraph formats
• Which tags to preserve after conversion
• Handling hidden “revision” text and comments
• Cleaning up the document after initial conversion
• Eliminating unused paragraph tags
• Applying the FrameMaker template
• Applying table styles
• Fixing “boxed” text
• Fixing “fake” hanging/indented lists
• Fixing tabs (relative vs. absolute tabs)
• Fixing tables
• How to borrow sections from a completed table
• Converting first rows to “header rows” (for tables that break across pages)
• When to convert tabbed text to tables
• Using advanced search features to located unwanted characters
• Fixing auto-numbered headings and nested lists
• Search and replace styles
• Graphics: changing embedded graphics to externally referenced files
• Vector graphics with editable text in Word
• How to convert them to externally referenced graphics with editable vectors and text
• Bitmapped screen captures
• How to convert them to externally referenced JPEG files
• Simple two-level equations that come into FrameMaker as Windows Meta Files
• How to convert them to editable text w/in anchored frames
• Preserving and correcting index markers
• Locating and fixing unresolved cross references
• Troubleshooting problems with Table of Contents and Index
• BONUS: working with challenges submitted ahead of time by students

About the Instructor

This WebSeminar is taught by Maxwell Hoffmann, a 23-year veteran of desktop publishing and document conversion solutions. Hoffmann manages training and consulting at ENLASO. He has used FrameMaker for over 19 years and is also a former FrameMaker Product Marketing Manager, Hoffmann has focused on document localization and translation for the past 10 years, working extensively with document analysis and XML publishing strategies. He has trained over 1,000 customers and sales professionals on a variety of scalable publishing solutions.

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ENLASO's Training Solutions
Customized training services and classes are also available on-site or through WebSeminars. To request a quote for an individual training session or more information about our training services, please contact Chris Raulf at marketing@translate.com, call 303 516 0857 x103, or complete the quote request form.