Nearly all of us have had an experience like this. You’re at the airport 2 hours ahead of time, and find out your flight is cancelled. And you have to be “there” by tonight. When my non-stop to Chicago with a famous airline was cancelled with no notice this morning, I was handed off to another airline, who could book me thorugh Chicago via a  connection to their “partner” airline in LAX. Great!

If you need to connect from Terminal 4 to Terminal 6 in LAX, find the "secret door" near gate 65A in T4 to take the shuttle bus across the tarmac.

The only problem was upon arrival in LAX, the first airline knew nothing about Terminal or gate location for the other flight. Airline ticket listed flight under Airline “A” name, but it was really an Airline “B” flight. Airline “B” flights are not listed on monitors in Terminal 4. Thus the fun begins.

Although these two airlines promote their “partnership” all the time, and frequently book connections to one another, there is no computer “bridge” between their product or services. The staff of both airlines are left clueless as to any flight details (other than departure) time for the other airline.

A phone call to Airline “B” finally revealed number of gate and terminal.

This brought to mind the number of times in my translation industry years that I had to work with two “partner” products developed by different companies. The products were seldom updated or released simultaneously. It often seemed that QA testing didn’t involve both products. Customer service for both SW companies frequently resorted to finger pointing. A bit like being stuck in an airline terminal trying to find the physical location of your connecting flight.

When I worked for translation agencies, I infrequently had influence over which product the client used. But whenever we had a project that used Tech Comm Suite for output to PDF, HTML and more, I breathed a sigh of relief, because there were no “connecting flights” in the process. Today, working for Adobe, I’m a bit spoiled having easy access to what I consider to be the best software in the world (I’ve tried nearly all of them, believe me.) But I still feel the pain for customers with “connecting flight” SW solutions that sometimes end up with unsynchronized releases, or illogical gaps in feature support.

Maybe someday, after many moons with Adobe, I might forget. But for now, like you’ve I’ve walked those endless corridors from terminal to terminal, trying to make it from gate to gate in less than an hour. As I sit in Business class about to depart on a non-stop, my feet throb when I see someone in those circumstances rushing through the glass jetways.

Whether you choose Adobe or a competitor, my earnest wish for you is that you can eventually achieve “non-stop” SW Suite solutions. Your feet will really appreciate it.

• Part I: Making Sense of Accessibility – standards, legal issues, and myths (19th June 10-11AM PST)
• Part II: Creating an Accessible Layout – document structures, colors, and using custom style sheets (17th July, 10-11AM PST)
• Parth III: Developing Accessible Content – tips on grammar, paragraph and sentence length, alternate text, and more (31st July, 10-11AM PST)

Register for this FREE webinar series here!

Happy participation

Team TechComm @ Adobe

This webinar focused on how one of Smart Software’s tools (Text Miner)can be used to “mine” terminology from FrameMaker documents, which can make both language translation and reading comprehension be much more effective.

Goal, finding the right 1,500 words

English has over 1,000,000 words and grows daily. Unfortunately, most of use approximately 1,500 words in speech or writing on a daily basis. Frequently, many of these 1,500 words are not good for global communications, as many words in our common vocabularies have no equivalent in other languages.

John Smart’s webinar included the “cloud” image of words below. Believe it or not, most of these words (in various contexts) do not translate well (or at all) into most languages:

One word that stands out in the cloud is “using”, a gerund. English is one of the only languages that used “-ing” words, and these are to be avoided.

What text mining can find

The following are major text components that text mining can identify in your existing FrameMaker content:

• Abbreviations in their short and long forms
• Special industry terminology and jargon
• Frequency of terminology for training
• Lists of terms for translation with content

Usage of this tool and technology can make if possible for you to identify your terminology in days vs. years. (The on-demand recorded webinar makes the reasons for this much more evident.)

Sample results of text mining from FrameMaker content

As the webinar made clear, existing terminology is extracted as key words and displayed with “left text context” and “right text context.” The screen shot below shows a typical example:

One example of ambiguous terminology that could use a replacement is “excessive FORCE.” This begs the question, “what amount of pressure is excessive?”  Although the meaning of the original text may seem obvious to an engineer or a seasoned groups of native English speakers who have read several versions of previous documentation, this type of terminology would be extremely difficult to translate with accuracy.

In addition, the true meaning in English is widely open to interpretation, which could have legal ramifications for a failure with aircraft or similar hardware.

The essential human factor in text minining

As John Smart made clear, although  Text Miner does an admirable job of identifying most of your terminology “automatically,” carefully qualified staff members are required to ensure that desired results are achieved.

You will need to designate a “Head Text Miner” who has the following qualifications:

• Subject Matter Expert
• Good command of English (strong English as second language is acceptable)
• Experienced in a role as an agent of change
• Understands common nuances in English
• Ideally, staff member is Multilingual
• A “global thinker” would be a perfect match to this role

The goal: one word, one meaning

A huge number of historic events and trends led to English becoming one of the most expressive languages on the planet. By its nature, English often offers a dozens ways (or words) to “say the same thing.” Of course, different words or phrases have different nuances and connotations.

The goal in effective technical communications for a global audience is whenever possible have one primary word with one meaning. The illustration shows “Simplified Spanish” that resulted from a clean terminology based after data mining. Because there was one English word for “electrical,” simplified choices in Spanish were the results.

Review and Refine terminology

The webinar gave sensible guidelines for creating a review team to ensure that correct terminology is saved or rejected. Recommended steps include:

• Consult your subject matter experts
• Form a small committee
• Ask for legal advice (e.g. consult your corporate legal team to determine what terms or words have led to litigation in the past)
• Visit your help desk staff to determine which words cause confusion
• Check your source t4exts
• Use the “hit” counter
• Look at instrument marks and lables
• Write a text text

Using less text with the right words

Several of our blogs in the past have touched on Simplified English and other tools that can be used to “reshape content for the small screen” to achieve better content for mobile devices. Text mining to refine your terminology can be equally essential to ensure that your message is crystal clear, in all languages, and to avoid legal issues due to missing cautions or warnings.

Adobe is committed towards bringing together thought-leaders in this space a day before important events and none gets bigger than the Annual STC Summit! On Sunday May 20th, a day before the STC Summit begins, we welcome you to attend this free conference (detailed agenda and registration link) at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare.

Some of the speakers and sessions include:

• Ann Rockley on “Developing an Adaptive Content Strategy”
• Joe Welinske of WritersUA on “Multi-Screen Help Authoring – How to Deal the Explosion in Device Sizes”
• Beth Gerber and Pam Harrison of Lightext, Inc on “Multi-Purposing your Policy and Procedure Content for Today’s Enterprises”
• Panel discussion – “The Decade Ahead: Opportunities and Challenges for Tech Comm Professionals” (Ann Rockley, Bernard Aschwanden, Joe Gollner, Joseph Ganci, Lynne A. Price, Matt Sullivan and Neil Perlin).

If you missed the links on top, they are provided below. If the adjacent picture is anything to go by, Adobe events can be a lot of fun even as they help you learn and network. Hope to see you there!

————————————————————–

Date: Sunday, May 20, 2012

Time: 8:00 am – 1:00 pm CST (with breakfast, refreshments and networking lunch included)

Venue: The Hyatt Regency O’Hare, Chicago-Rosemont, Illinois, USA

NO REGISTRATION FEE! Just sign up and attend! Important links:

• Registration
• Detailed agenda
• Speaker profiles

————————————————————–

- Team TechComm @ Adobe

This blog’s insights were drawn from our recent recorded webinar with John Smart, “Going Global and Mobile with Adobe FrameMaker.” (Note: you will need to use credentials from your free Adobe.com account to log-in and view and recorded webinar.)

The Challenge:

Although the English language now has over 1,000,000 words, native speakers often use about 1,500 to 2,000 words per day. Unfortunately, these are 1,500 different words, so written content from two authors can be highly inconsistent.

 Controlled English Defined

This is a simplified form of technical English based on 1,200 key words. This reduced vocabulary increases both usability and readability of English technical documentation. It is possible to express technical concept in clear, concise English without complex syntax or grammar.

Many Historic Precedents

One precursor to today’s Simplified English or Controlled English was Simplified Technical English (STE), developed in 1988 by Fokker Aircraft as ASD-STE100. Believe it or not, this formula was restricted to a total of 985 basic words:

• 512 Common Nouns
• 218 Verbs
• 36 Adjectives
• 20 Adverbs
• 18 Prepositions and Conjunctions
• 171 Technical Nouns

Controlled English makes content more readable

As the illustration below shows, use of Controlled English (through tools like MaxIt and competitive products that work with FrameMaker) can reduce text size by 30% and actually make the intent of the content much clearer.

Until about a year ago, ROI or benefits claims for Simplified or Controlled English have generally focused on improved language translation quality and reduced costs on such projects. Ironically, this reduced English vocabulary is also ideal for content destined for tablet computers and mobile devices.

Users of such devices are often consuming content “on their feet” and have to both find and comprehend technical messages more quickly. The types of Controlled English demonstrated in this recorded webinar can be ideal to achieve this goal. Best of all, many solutions like the one demonstrated by Mr. Smart work directly within FrameMaker, as authoring occurs.

Beyond Content Structure

A large number of blogs and webinars are still focusing on how content is structured or managed (e.g. DITA and CMS.) These are significant issues for a successful tech comm solution, but we sometimes overlook something as basic as sentence structure. Since English is such a highly expressive language (1,000,000 words and growing daily), many of us need to retrain ourselves to compose content in a second, alternative way, with far fewer words.

I would predict that in the near future grammar schools, high schools and colleges will begin to include “global English” or “Simplified English” as part of basic curriculum. It would be simplistic to assume that by mid-Century all native-English speakers will transit over to universal vocabulary of about 1,200 words. But in order to communicate effectively with mobile English speakers and the rest of the world, we will have to adapt to this second way of communicating via text.

While the details of these webinars and the registration links are available here, a gist is provided below:

• 13 Common Mistakes about Communicating Policies & Procedures Content…and How to Avoid Them (in 2 parts)
• Part 1: Thursday, May 31,  10-11 AM US/Pacific
• Part 2: Thursday, June 14,  10-11 AM US/Pacific
• Are You Tempted to Use a Template to Expedite Policies & Procedure Development?
• Thursday, July 12,  10-11 AM US/Pacific

Raymond E. Urgo, principal of Los Angeles-based Urgo & Associates, is an internationally recognized expert, thought leader, educator, author, and speaker on the development, communication, and management of policies and procedures (P&P) programs and content in organizations. For his contributions in P&P to the technical communication profession, he holds the honorary rank, Fellow, in the Society for Technical Communication. He is the publisher of the award-winning e-newsletter,The Policies & Procedures Authority.

- Team TechComm @ Adobe

Register for our Summer bonanza of guest webinars

Like many translation professionals (and their customers) GPI discovered that certain features in both FrameMaker and RoboHelp are particularly useful in reducing time and costs from language translation projects. Most of the projects involve speeding up post-translation formatting, or working with some form of single source publishing.

Although you may download the entire PDF version of “Streamlining localization workflows using Adobe technical communication tools,” you may find the summary in this blog useful. You may also wish to view our recorded webinar, which touched on many of these topics, “Reduced Cost, Faster GTM – Best Practices in Structured & Unstructured Authoring to Drive Downstream Localization Efficiencies.” Please note that you will be prompted to log-in with you free Adobe account credentials to view this on-demand webinar.

Ways that RoboHelp Benefits Translation Projects

The following are some basic features of RoboHelp that provide essential support to translation and localization projects:

• Unicode support for over 35 languages
• Edit topics side-by-side with Multiple Document Interface (MDI)
• Support for multiple tables of contents, indices and glossaries in different languages
• Granular control over language definition: assign a language at the topic or even paragraph levels, in addition to the project
• The “LANG” attribute is used for thesaurus, spell checking, Smart Indexing and also creating the search index
• The language attribute specified at the paragraph level is given the highest preference
• RoboHelp produces clean XHTML code with no “extra steps” required
• The new Review and Collaboration workflow can streamline project workflow saving considerable time and cost as your team is empowered to collaborate and communicate accurately and efficiently

Collaborative Review in Cloud or on Desktop

An entire RoboHelp project (or selected topics) may be output for PDF Review. A PDF files is generated, which is optimized for annotations and comments via free Adobe Acrobat Reader. The PDF file may be placed “in the cloud” (e.g. Acrobat.com), on a shared server, or for remote reviewers who lack access to the cloud, individual copies of PDF may be emailed. Multiple reviewers can make comments and annotations to the same PDF file on cloud or server.

Whether a single review PDF is used or multiple “desktop ”copies of PDFs, all comments and annotations may be imported back into the RoboHelp project“ in place in the source files. Comments and annotations dated and identified by multiple reviewers are merged.

Note: although collaborative review within the cloud would be preferable, the language translation industry has 1000s of linguists in remote areas with limited connectivity bandwidth. In such instances, it is a great benefit being able to send out individual PDF files via email.

Using Track Changes to Manage Comments

The RoboHelp user may use RoboHelp’s Track Changes feature (almost identical to that in FrameMaker) to locate the next change, and accept or reject it. It is also possible to accept or reject all changes in a topic. Since imported PDF comments were placed “in place,” many opportunities for errors are eliminated.

Marking Topics as “Ready for Review”

Sometimes projects are authored or translated in stages. Some portions of content (or topics) may be submitted for translation after base translation has begun. RoboHelp Project Manager can be used to select topics and mark them “Ready for Review” to prevent other, unapproved topics from becoming part of the review process. This is one more tool that can prevent errors during the review process.

Managing Shared and Reusable Assets

RoboHelp 9 provides an enhanced Resource manager and increased support for Version and Source Control applications. Projects with multiple authors may have document assets leveraged more effectively when authoring or editing the source language files for translation.

Assets may be Kept Up-to-Date via “Live Linking” in Resource Manager

Source and Version control helps keep team members “in synch.” RoboSource helps multiple authors avoid getting out-of-synch as changes occur in their projects. Many source control applications integrate directly with RoboHelp and can be invoked directly from with a RoboHelp project:

• RoboSource Control 3.1
• Team Foundation Server 2010 and 2008
• Perforce
• Microsoft Visual Source Safe 5.0
• Any other version control application that supports Microsoft Source Code Control API

Other key improvements to Robohelp 9 that aid Translation projects

• Asset folders are now unlimited
• Users can create “links” via “drag-n-drop”
• Prevent duplication and maintain consistency with Asset Links
• Streamlinked ePub output from RoboHelp

In conclusion

This blog (and the White Paper it references) touches on only a few of RoboHelp’s advanced features that make any Help or Policy and Procedure authoring and publishing easier. The features selected here have significance in improving time and cost savings for projects that will be translated into other languages. We encourage  you to explore both the White Paper an on-demand Webinar that were referenced at the beginning of this blog.

We will begin the list a little selfishly this time by calling out our April Fools’ Day blog on TechWhirl: Adobe Announces the Launch of HelpRobo with RoboHelp 9

Some other blogs that were a good read -

Asking questions is more important than finding answers — why?

Creating franchise operations manuals that are customisable and controlled

Differences between blogs and wikis, and why you might need both

Do you need a Documentation Manager when Technical Authors are embedded into Agile project teams?

How long does it take to write a book

[Infographic] Changes In Technical Communication Staffing And Budget

Minimal punctuation

Musings on Collaborative Authoring

Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid when Starting a Help Project!

Will the growth of tablet and mobile phone based reading lead to the return of Clippy?

Neil has many years as a consultant helping craft Help solutions in a variety of formats, and he is also an expert in RoboHelp. I think you will find his advice highly useful.

According to Neil, two developments in recent years have magnified the possibility of making mistakes when planning a Help system:

• The ‘internalization’ of help into an accelerating documentation process
• The shift from viewing online help as ‘documentation’ to ‘content’ for reuse beyond the boundaries of the doc group

Mistake #1: Misunderstanding the present

An old but common mistake is to misunderstand the difference between Web Help and WebHelp. They sound alike, but the first is a generic term for help on the web; the second is a specific browser-based output pioneered in RoboHelp in 1998 and now offered in one form or other by all help authoring tools.

The solution: Make sure you understand your online help output options and how they fit into your users’ configurations.

Mistake #2: Not preparing technically for the future

Help authors got away with practices like not following coding standards or exploiting authoring tool peculiarities. Such practices were once done proudly, a sign that the author was a rule-breaking renegade. Today, they’re increasingly seen as the cause of annoying and expensive-to-fix problems.

A good example of this is authors who common text formatting toolbar for local formatting instead of styles and CSS (cascading style sheets). Using styles is more efficient, consistent, faster, and makes automated format conversion possible. Improved tools, like RoboHelp’s Styles and Formatting pod make it easier to use styles for everything—text enhancements, like boldfacing, as well as traditional heading styles.

The solution: understand up-to-date practices and make maximum use of your authoring tool’s features.

Mistake #3: Not preparing managerially for the future

Very often, the documentation for a project that has to be updated or maintained is unavailable. The result is lost time during the update while the new authors reconstruct the project settings.

The solution: Document the project and update the documentation any time the project changes either technically or structurally.

Mistake #4: Not coordinating the help authoring with other groups

Help authoring used to be self-contained aside from asking Engineering about questions or context sensitivity integration with the application or review comments. But once help became HTML-based in 1997, more and more groups and standards began affecting help projects in ways that may be important but not always obvious. Help authors have to interact with these groups and follow these standards. If not, some technical decisions may not get made, or may get made in ways that are detrimental to the interests of the help projects.

The solution: Determine who is affected by and who and what affects the help projects and factor it into the projects. Help authors have to be prepared to take the initiative because some of the other groups may not think of taking it to the doc group.

Mistake #5: Not defining (and documenting) the development process

Help authoring has many steps and it’s easy to forget a few during development or when it’s time to publish the final version. The result being time wasted in having to go back to correct problems, embarrassment when users find a problem that was overlooked, or unnecessarily complicated development.

The solution: Develop and use project task checklists. It sounds silly, especially for experienced authors who know their projects. But it’s risky to trust memory. Experienced airline pilots use checklists, so should help authors.

Mistake #6: Not developing mechanisms to support content consistency

One of the hardest tasks in help authoring is developing structurally and terminologically consistent content. Without that consistency, the help is hard to use because readers have to take time away from understanding what the topics are saying to understanding how they’re saying it. Different terms make the content hard to search. A user who refers to a task as A and searches for it in a help system written by an author who calls that task B won’t find any hits and will conclude that the help is useless.

The solution: This can be made up of two parts. First, develop and use topic templates to get structural consistency between different topics of the same type—procedure, concept, reference, etc. Developing templates is tedious but fast and templates can be used in and amortized over multiple projects.

Second, see if the tool has features that help create consistent content, such as variables. For example, a variable called ‘sandwich name’ with a value of ‘hoagie’ can consistently insert the word ‘hoagie’ for us. We don’t type the name but simply tell the tool to insert the name of the variable – ‘hoagie’, until we change the variable value, at which point the name changes everywhere or an auto-complete feature that reads the first few letters of a word as we type it and offers to automatically complete it.

Mistake #7: Not developing mechanisms to support format consistency

Similar to the need for content consistency is the need for format consistency. I raised the issue of styles earlier as a management issue but it’s also a development issue, and important enough to revisit for emphasis. ‘Format consistency’ refers to content display—font, size, colors, etc. but it goes beyond text to issues like graphic position and size control, and table formatting. This consistency is not only important for authoring and reading, but also to follow online authoring trends towards removing all formatting from documents and putting it in the CSS instead.

The solution: Develop a CSS and as many table style sheets as needed, teach authors how to use them, make their use mandatory, and prohibit local formatting. Keep it simple; the harder the styles are to use, the less they will be used.

Mistake #8: Not revisiting a project’s design in light of ‘environmental’ changes

If this is your first help project, you’ve got a clean slate. But if this is not your first project, past experience can actually be detrimental. There is a tendency to repeat what was done in the past projects even if it may no longer be appropriate due to changes in the authoring and delivery environment (the term ‘environment’ refers to the technical environment in which the help must operate – the platform – Windows, Mac, UNIX, etc., the browser(s) – IE, Firefox, Chrome, etc., and location –local, network-drive, or server).

The solution: Check periodically with Engineering or IT about what may be changing in your distribution or configuration environment. Some environmental changes won’t affect help authoring, but some may. You need to find out before starting the authoring.

Mistake #9: Not planning to test QA and usability

Very often, we create help projects with no idea whether readers can use them. There are actually two sides to this—QA, whether a particular feature works at all and its usability, whether readers can find and understand how to use that feature in the first place. QA is tedious but necessary; the more broken links in a project, the more trouble users have with it and the more credibility it loses. I recommend setting up a series of rules for the types of errors to accept in a project.

The solution:  I recommend to clients that, if nothing else, they create a few simple cases that ask test subjects to answer a question by using the help, then watch them try to find the answer to see if they can, how long it takes, and how painful the process was. Repeat this with a dozen people. You may not get statistically valid data but you can get a lot of good, often painful, feedback.

Mistake #10: Not planning to create an index

Authors often create online help with no index, assuming most readers will navigate using the search feature. In many cases, this is because we don’t like indexing or think there isn’t enough time to create an index. This has always been true in help authoring but has been aggravated in recent years by the spread of Google. Why create an index when users will just search?

The solution: Simply create an index. At a minimum, make each topic’s title an index entry. Better still, make each title and its inverse index entries. For example, for a topic called Print Dialog Box, create the index entries ‘Print Dialog Box’ and ‘Dialog Box, Print’.

When your work involves production at a translation agency, you see just about any way a document could possibly be pulled together, good or bad. Like all agencies, GPI had seen many FrameMaker source files that had less than desirable structure, when a project came in for the first time. Most professional agencies will do their best to help a customer “clean up” content before it goes into translation to avoid multiplying unnecessary steps over multiple languages.

Like many translation professionals (and their customers) GPI discovered that certain features in both FrameMaker and RoboHelp are particularly useful in reducing time and costs from language translation projects. Most of the projects involve speeding up post-translation formatting, or working with some form of single source publishing.

Although you may download the entire PDF version of “Streamlining localization workflows using Adobe technical communication tools,” you may find the summary in this blog useful. Due to the length of material, we are breaking our review into two blogs. Part 1 covers FrameMaker. Part 2 will cover RoboHelp. You may also wish to view our recorded webinar, which touched on many of these topics, “Reduced Cost, Faster GTM – Best Practices in Structured & Unstructured Authoring to Drive Downstream Localization Efficiencies.” Please note that you will be prompted to log-in with you free Adobe account credentials to view this on-demand webinar.

8 Ways Unstructured FrameMaker helps Translation

Managing Styles in Paragraph, Character and Table Catalogs in FrameMaker 10

One of the biggest headaches involved in preparing unstructured files for translation is reconciling paragraph and character styles across documents. Older versions of FrameMaker did not offer very robust tools in this area. FrameMaker 10, however, has beefed up controls over which styles display, determining which styles are in use, deleting unwanted styles, and even creating custom displays of catalogs confined to desired styles.

Managing format overrides with FrameMaker 10

FrameMaker 10 introduced a robust series of search capabilities that enable publishers (client or translation agency) to swiftly locate any paragraph or range of text that does not match the catalog definition. This is particularly useful in FrameMaker projects which involve some sections of text copied and pasted from Microsoft Word, which can contain unwanted fonts. This one feature literally can save 100s of hours in a year if enough languages are involved.

Suppress unwanted alerts on file open

Previous to FrameMaker 10, earlier versions of the product would freeze the screen with a pop-up alert every time there was a missing graphic, missing font or unresolved cross reference. There are times in the translation format correction workflow when a single chapter may be sent to a team member for edits who does not have the entire book file, or all of the graphics and fonts. FrameMaker will “remember” these missing elements when the corrected file returns to its normal location project location. Publishers can now suppress alerts and swiftly open files for edits, and avoid dozens of unnecessary clicks to get through these pop-up alerts.

Real time spell check helpful in translated documents

Older versions of FrameMaker required a deliver “check spelling” action. FrameMaker 10 can display wavy lines under misspelled words, similar to Microsoft Word. In FrameMaker, paragraphs or character styles can have a language associated with them, which will invoke the correct language dictionary. This is one more quality check on top of regular linguistic quality assurance.

Drag n’ Drop editing and automated scripting

Linguistic editing in FrameMaker 10 can now involve selecting a few words or characters and simply dragging them to the correct location. It is not uncommon for hidden data to occasionally cause some unwanted spaces between characters.

ExtendScript capabilities give FrameMaker 10 users the ability to automate repetitious tasks. This is particularly helpful in post-translation text, where duplicate bullets may need removal, or other tedious tasks. Users or translation agencies can create and maintain a library of highly useful scripts.

FrameMaker 10’s background color (highlighter)

This feature works similar to the highlighter pen in Word, with some limitations. Unfortunately, the band of color increases or decreases with changes in point size. It has one especially strong use; showing where conditional text is in use. A vivid palette of background colors can be associated with various conditions that will show/hide text. This feature is much easier to manage with more obvious visual indicators.

Extended rich media support in FrameMaker 10

FrameMaker 10 has further extended the number of rich media file formats supported. Such files can be embedded in FrameMaker, and create dynamic graphics which the customer may interact with in Help or PDF output. Captivate screen simulation videos can take the space of one frame, and in a 7 second video cover information that previously required nearly a dozen static screen captures.

This greatly reduces the graphic assets which must be managed in a project, and also reduces page count in PDF output

Collaborative Review with PDF annotation

FrameMaker 10 can save a PDF file optimized for review. The file can be fully commented or annotated with Free Acrobat Reader. The same file can sequentially receive comments and annos from multiple users. When the review is complete, all of the annotations can be imported “in place” in the original FrameMaker source file.

6 Ways that Structured FrameMaker Helps Translation

FrameMaker 10 extended DITA support to V1.2. Support is so robust that you can open the example files directly from the DITA Open Toolkit. Here are some brief highlights covered in the White Paper:

Enhanced tag view allows collapse/expand of XML elements on document page

Older versions of FrameMaker required opening the structure view to see elements as “tree-like” tags, and expand or collapse them. Now the optional tag display of elements on the document page can be expanded, collapsed, or manipulated through drag n’ drop. This makes the product much easier to use on a small screen.

Manage metadata with FrameMaker’s new attribute editor

The old, modal dialog that appeared when users double clicked on an attribute to change the definition has been replaced with a more dynamic menu that can float and stay open during editing. It makes advanced aspects of structure much more accessible to novice users.

Filter by attribute

The traditional conditional text control model was not well suited for structured editing. In a binary, structured FrameMaker document, it was possible to apply conditions in ways that could cause broken structure when show/hide commands were used. Now certain attribute values can be identified as the catalyst for sections of the document to show or hide. This follows XML and DITA protocol and produces much cleaner results.

Developing attribute values with FrameMaker 10

A new Config File Maker wizard in FrameMaker 10 allows users to quickly define attribute values while viewing the document. It is much less complicated than the EDD editing steps previously required.

Enhanced content management support in FrameMaker 10

FrameMaker 10 works on a topic or concept level with any CMS system that is WebDav compatible. Documentum, Sharepoint and Alfresco are 3 of the solutions that work “out-of-the-box.” This functionality is available at no extra charge.

Various DITA usability enhancements in FrameMaker 10

1. Switch between Resource Manager (RM) or Document view in a dita map
2. Drag and drop across dita maps
3. Insert multiple topicref elements in dita maps

The list of enhancements goes far beyond what is listed here, and the GPI authored White Paper will give you more detail. Watch for part two of this blog series which will cover ways that RoboHelp benefits the translation/localization process.