Re: Using Word for drafts?

["Jeremy H. Griffith" <jeremy@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 26 May 2002 15:26:30 -0700, William Courington 
<billc@forWord.com> wrote:

>Forgive my naivete, but in some settings it would be very convenient 
>to write and review chapter drafts in Word and create real books from 
>the Word files in Frame. I would expect to set up corresponding 
>templates for both systems (same tags), to set some restrictions on 
>graphics, to prohibit creation of new styles, etc. For the next 
>edition of a book, the idea would be to generate new Word draft 
>chapters from the "official" Frame files.
>
>I know that Filtrix and mif2go can do a lot of the file format 
>translation. However, I have not used either. The question is 
>whether, with the aid of templates designed in advance to be 
>convertible, the conversion can be so nearly automatic that it's 
>suitable for regular real-world use. Has anyone tried this?

Many have tried, but no-one we know of continues to use such 
a "round-tripping" workflow, for good reason.  While the theory 
may sound good, many, many years of experience with conversion 
issues between numerous applications has taught us that in 
practical terms, it is a doomed strategy.

The main reason is that as soon as you get past the simplest
of texts, the differences between the capabilities of the
tools (Word and Frame, in this case) create endless problems.
Cross-references, autonumbering, hyperlinks, graphics, all
are handled so differently that reliable conversion is next
to impossible.  When we convert from Frame to Word, it is
for the purpose of generating a review copy of the Frame doc
that is faithful to the content of that doc, for Word users
to read and annotate.  Therefore we can replace problematic
elements with plain text, and achieve excellent fidelity.

We spent many engineer-months trying to create "live" xrefs
in the Word files, and proved that Frame's rich methods are
simply impossible to match in Word.  Autonumbering in Word
is notoriously unreliable.  There are no "sideheads"; we
emulate them, but creating additional ones in Word itself
manually would be *very* challenging.  And on and on.

Likewise, going from Word to Frame by any method is going
to be problematic, and not all of the problems are visible...
some, such as strangely applied char formats, will manifest
only by their interference with other Frame functionality.
This can be maddening, and a cause of premature hair loss.

A far better, general, strategy is to do the original 
authoring of the primary source docs in Frame.  If you
need to get content from Word users, fine, but only do
it once.  Then the pain of cleanup will not be chronic.
After initial drafts are in, handle further inputs by
editing the Frame text (possibly pasting from a Word
file as plain text only), *not* by re-import from Word.
Mif2Go will not help you on import; it only does export.

When you need to get feedback from Word users, use our
Mif2Go Word output; there's nothing else like it.  If
your docs are *real* simple, you can try Frame's native
export.  But if export to Word is a regular part of your 
life, you will very quickly spend more time and money on 
cleanup than the $295 Mif2Go costs.  The ROI argument is 
compelling, with full recovery of cost in less than a 
day's worktime... not even counting the numerous other 
formats you get too (such as WinHelp, HTML, XML, HH, JH, 
and OHJ).

Do yourself a favor, and for Word export, try out the 
unlimited sample version of Mif2Go available at:
  http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download
currently called samp33u25.zip (the 25 will be 26 soon;
we upgrade very often).  Email tech support and upgrades
are free and unlimited.

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  (jeremy@omsys.com)  http://www.omsys.com/

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