Re: WordPerfect to FrameMaker conversion

[Jay Smith <jay@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gabriele,

We do not "directly" convert WP8 _formatted_ docs to FM.

HOWEVER, for many of our book projects, we take authors' manuscripts
in as various forms of formatted text INTO WP8.  

WordPerfect has an extremely strong and useful MACRO system and a
find/replace facility that is nearly as good (though it does lack some
needed logic features). As a result, we often use WP8 as a
pre-formatting engine and a tagging engine.

We then reduce the document in WP8 to ANSI text.  We import that into
FM.  

And the best part... We use FRAMESCRIPT SCRIPTS to AUTOMATICALLY
paragraph and character tag the entire document based on the
preparation done in WP8.


While in WP8 we take one of two approaches:

A) Using "hooks" in the EXISTING formatting of the manuscript we
replace/amplify the existing formatting with IN-LINE TAGGING.

B) We build upon the author's formatting, making it more consistent
and/or completing it and/or making it have more "hooks" (see below). 
Then we do "A" once all the necessary "hooks" are in place.

The IN-LINE TAGGING takes one of two forms: 

  ENTIRE-PARAGRAPH: one tag code that indicates that the entire
paragraph is to have a certain tagname.

  START-END: pair of tag codes that indicate the start and end of
tagged text; which would typically be character tagging, for example
the name of a publication.

Example: if the author put bold on ALL and ONLY the section headings,
we use that fact ("hook") to do a find/replace on the BOLD ON code,
replacing it with TEXT such as "<SECTIONHEAD>" as in ENTIRE-PARAGRAPH
tag.

    <SECTIONHEAD>This is the start of a section
    about some really boring stuff.

Example: if the author's only use of italic text in the WP8 document
was for the names of book titles, we would use a macro to search for
all such occurrences and replace them with a pair of START-END tags.

    This paragraph discusses Jay's incredible
    book, <PUBON>How to be a Great Lover,<PUBOFF>
    and why you should buy it.


By now you, and many readers, probably think that we are totally
NUTS!  However, there is method in our madness.  

a) WP8 is a very user-friendly environment.  We can sit a "basic
clerical person" down at a WP8 workstation and have them do a large
portion of this work.  They understand WP8 already -- they don't
understand FM.

b) WP8 allows you to see the "reveal codes" -- which few or no other
word processors do.  Thus you can see exactly where your tag codes are
going and thus you DO or DO NOT (as desired) end up tagging spaces and
punctuation that should or should not be tagged.  This allows you to
see and understand the "hooks" that you will leverage for your use.

c) WP8 is incredibly good for KEYBOARD-ONLY work.  NO MOUSING AT
ALL!!!  Most of the work in WP8 can be done with single keystrokes or
single two-key strokes (like CTRL something).  FM usually ends up
requiring either a lot of mousing of 3-, 4-, 5-keystroke commands.

d) Making and editing keystrokes in WP8 is incredibly easy. We can set
up and save specific keyboard configurations for particular projects,
if necessary, including running macros with keystrokes.  I can do all
this setup myself in a matter of a couple minutes, without the arcane
kind of setup required by FM. 

e) Importing into WP8 from a variety of arcane word processing and
spreadsheet formats is easier (possible) than into FM.  

Once we got the FrameScript scripts working to do the
find/replace/remove functions to convert the ANSI file to fully
formatted text, the result was incredible.

We can have a part-time high school student on "work release" ;) do
much of the work in WP8 and then the FrameScript will run in a matter
of ONLY A COUPLE MINUTES. The part-timer never has to learn Frame.

On our last project, we formatted a 450 page technical book using this
method. It included a couple thousand run-in heading paragraphs which
are particularly obnoxious to tag in FM.  THE FRAMESCRIPT PORTION OF
THE WORK TOOK ABOUT TWO (2) MINUTES TO FORMAT THAT 450 PAGES.  Because
of the "hooks" that (fortunately) existed in the author's manuscript
file, we were able to convert his formatting to the necessary tags in
a matter of a few minutes with a WP8 macro.

In another example, we are working on a long-running set of books that
consist mostly of highly formatted tables.  The tables are very
consistent.  The authors are "computer amateurs" working in a variety
of word processors and even spreadsheets.  We take their files into
WP8 as tables and do the final content work/editing in WP8.  We then
"strip" the files of all formatting -- so they are just 10 pt Times
plain, plain, plain.  The tables are about as plain as they can get. 
We save the file as "ANSI GENERIC WORD PROCESSOR" format and import
that into FM.  We have a FrameScript script that formats all the
content NOT in the tables.  Another script formats the tables, and all
the content in them -- because the tables are very consistent, the
script knows exactly how to decide what cells to shade and which rows
are headings, etc.  All the FrameScript stuff runs in less than a
minute to make bunches of tables beautiful (or as beautiful as these
can get).

I have always taken the "toolbox" approach of stringing together these
various tools, while trying to spend most of the time working in
programs that the greatest number of my available staff can work
with.  It requires thought and planning, but it can be useful in
certain situations.

Jay Smith


Gabriele Charpentier wrote:
> 
> Help!
> 
> Oh, what a pain it is! How does one convert WordPerfect8 docs (technical) to
> FrameMaker 5/6 without going crazy. Has anyone successfully gone through
> this process? Any suggestion, help, anything, would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Gaby Charpentier
> 
> charpeng@hotmail.com

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