Adobe kicked off the recent Society for Technical Communication Summit (#STC13) Conference in Atlanta with a special half day session of thought leaders called “Adobe Day” (#AdobeDay.) The demo free sessions included individual presentations on specific themes around content, strategy, and an intriguing journey from past to future with one of our key products. The read more…
In this blog, our guest blogger, Tony Self of Hyperwrite in Melbourne, Australia, shares his thoughts on various levels of Re-use. Tony has done several guest webinars with AdobeTCS. You will find links to recorded webinars and upcoming webinars at the end of this blog. Levels of Re-use, by Tony Self At the heart of read more…
Many forms of tech doc still require CAUTIONs and WARNINGs, which are delineated by special artwork. Most Word users employ artwork that is copied and pasted to achieve the desired look. FrameMaker 11 offers a powerful feature: Reference Pages which contain one instance of the desired CAUTION artwork that is duplicated many times via paragraph read more…
Ellis Pratt of Cherryleaf in the UK made a very compelling presentation on the Changing Nature of Content in a recent webinar with Adobe. There is a webinar recording, and a detailed white paper (authored by Pratt) which you can download on this subject. NOTE: both of the links in the previous sentence will take read more…
Hello everyone! At the last STC Summit last year in Chicago, we had several people come up to us and say they were sad they missed the amazing lineup of speakers we had at Adobe Day just one day prior to the Summit opening. To ensure no one misses the great opportunity this time, we’ve read more…
Tables are relatively simple to create with Word, but compared to FrameMaker tables they would not be classified as “sturdy.” For years tables have been one of the strongest features in FrameMaker, in large part due to the degree that customers have “stretched the envelope” with complex, high page count projects that required tables with read more…
In conversion projects, time is often the limiting factor. Even if you really feel the entire 500-page manual should be converted to DITA or some other structure, you might be stuck with the old materials for a long time to come. And while you are hacking away at the old document, changing details in the read more…
One of the most common complaints I have heard from Microsoft Word users is the amount of time they spend trying to reposition “slippery” graphics that fall off of the page near a page break. With effort, it is possible to create a true anchored frame to control an image somewhat, but the choices for read more…
There is a a considerable contrast between Microsoft Word and FrameMaker regarding the way that styles, catalogs and removal of format overrides are handles. Word displays character styles (e.g. emphasized words) and paragraph styles (e.g. lists of headings) together in one style catalog. FrameMaker has a separate catalog for: paragraph styles character styles table styles read more…
Amongst the many compelling reasons for upgrading from FrameMaker 7.x to FrameMaker 11, real “out-of-the-box” DITA support would surely be near the top of the list. Although FrameMaker 7.x was a competent and potent structured editor in its day, it was developed before most major milestones in DITA development and approval were achieved. A timeline read more…
