Re: [austechwriter] Merging of Framemaker files on Clearcase

[hedley_finger@xxxxxxxxxxx]

All:

> > > Our versioning environment is Rational Clearcase and we use
> > > branching system to maintain various versions of the process
> > > documents. I would like to know whether Clearcase can merge
> > > Frame files as it merges Word documents. If yes, how fool-proof
> > > is the process and what are the drawbacks (if any)?
> >
> > You can save your files as MIF, an ASCII text format like RTF and save
> > them to your repository.  Then you can merge the branches back
together.
> > This works with Visual SourceSafe but I would suggest requesting an
> > evaluation copy of FrameMaker from Adobe to test whether branched
> > versions can be merged under ClearCase.
>
> We did this for some time using CVS as the repository manager, [...]
> However, we never tried to do any merging with the MIF, and I suspect
> it could be problematic.  For example, suppose two authors work on
> different parts of the same doc, adding paragraphs, then commit the
> changes.  Because of the way Frame creates identifiers, the same IDs
> will be used for the new (different) paragraphs in both docs.  CVS
> will not notice this; it will just merge into a new MIF, which will
> now contain illegal duplication of the <Unique> IDs.  Not so good.

Jeremy is quite correct; different repository managers may process the
MIF files differently.

In the case of Visual SourceSafe (VSS), it recognizes three different kinds
of
changes:

@    insertions, i.e. new text at a particular line that was not there
before,
@    deletions, i.e. old text at a particular line that WAS there before,
and
@    conflicts, i.e. replacement of a string at a particular line by
     another string, equivalent to a deletion followed by an insertion at
     the same place.

Because the <Unique ...> tags occupy a single line, the change of the ID is
treated as a conflict.  VSS recognizes the conflict, asks if conflicts have
been resolved (to which you lyingly reply 'yes' even though you haven't
resolved
conflicts), and then applies the IDs from one of the files to the merged
result.

Admittedly, I have tested this only on short documents of three or four
pages,
to which I made substantial changes (paras, chars, tables, graphics) before
merging.  In all cases FrameMaker opened the merged result without
complaint.

What could be problematic is that different paragraphs or tables in the two
branches
have the same IDs.  Since the ID of a table is used in the anchor marker to
point
to the 'real' table located at the beginning of the file, there is a
potential
for the anchor marker to point to two different tables with the same ID
in the merged result.

Hence my caveat to obtain an evaluation copy of FrameMaker to put your
repository manager (ClearCase, CVS, VSS, or whatever) before
committing (get it?) to purchase.

If all else fails you can use FrameMaker's document comparison to merge
branched files.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications/Technical communicator and FrameMaker mentor
MYOB Australia <http://www.myob.com.au/>
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151
Australia
<mailto:hedley_finger@myob.com.au>
Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

Copyright (C) MYOB Limited 2002


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