Convert to FrameMaker

["Lara Shell" <lshell@xxxxxx>]

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am responsible for the technical writing team in a software development
company.  We publish user guides on the usage of the software, currently we
use an Oracle  form that can be converted to PDF and other formats including
HTML, RTF.
I started investigating FrameMaker 7.0 it looks that it can be helpful.
Some of the restrictions of the current process we are using  is that you
cannot develop a TOC or indexes, but advantages are that you can retrieve
text from tables that you can use all the time without having to enter them
again in every document.  We have mainly a pool of descriptions and
instructions that we use in each document to explain all the fields that
have to be entered in the various software windows.

Our documents are structured like this:
Main tasks you can achieve using the software window (we have more than 400
windows each is documented separately)
Step-by-step guides on how to achieve these tasks
screenshot of the window
table outlining all the fields in the window, instructions on how to use
them (these fields are common between many windows and we store a database
with all definitions and choose the required field from this stored pool)

My questions are:
How can we convert our current user's reference over 1000 pages (contains
images and tables) to FM format, in an easy and convenient way?
Is there a function in FrameMaker that we can use to store generic
definitions to use in our tables?
Will there be a problem with images?
How to create the template?
What are the exact advantages of using FM, i need to justify to my manager
for approval?

Thank you for your time and effort,

Best Regards,

Lara Shell


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