Re: Frame to text file question

["Thomas Michanek" <thomas.michanek@xxxxxxxxx>]

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From: "John Stewart" <jestewar@veritas.com>
> Can't find anything about this in the archives. What's the best way to
> convert a Frame file to a text file and preserve some rudimentary
> formatting, or add it back in 

Take a look at FM2A (FM to ASCII) from the makers of IXgen:
http://home.pacifier.com/~franks/fm2a.html

If you cannot use or afford FM2A, you could instead:
1. Design an alternate template for your document(s), where perhaps all
   text is set in a monospaced font, using ASCII bullet characters, etc.
   Apply this template to your document before saving as text, making sure
   to save all lines of a paragraph as separate text lines.
2. Save the document as text, and run a home-made re-formatting script on
   the resulting text file.

Neither of these are easy.

> Frame apparently inserts a few spaces at the ends of the
> lines when they wrap, or some character that causes problems for the
> programmers that are asking for this little masterpiece--they claim it's
> causing problems with their document comparison utility. 

Exactly what is the text being used for? What "documents" are they trying
to compare? Could it be easier to compare the FM documents instead?
Before you spend too much time getting formatted text, investigate what
the need is for, and if it can be accomplished some other way.
*If* you need to save your documents as text for the purpose of being 
easily read ASCII text files (using text editors), then you do need to
spend time (or money) formatting it. But it sounds like you have a
different need.

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Thomas Michanek, FrameMaker/UNIX/MIF expert
mailto:Thomas.Michanek@telia.com   (Sweden)
  http://go.to/framers , or go directly to:
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