Re: a script for a combersome process?

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

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> The size of (and time to generate or interpret) MIF
> files gets out of hand even for some small documents.
> PS: One of my beefs with FM. (or yet another request for improvement.)
> Why aren't there options for what gets exported when you save to MIF?

I'm not sure what options you'd be looking for in such a Save As.
MIF is "simply" a textual version of the internal representation
of a binary FM document. There's a pretty exact mapping between
the two formats. You cannot easily remove, say, the table catalog
from a Save As operation and expect the resulting file to work.
Catalog formats, table instances and embedded graphics represents
the major parts (in MIF) of a fairly ordinary FM document.

In addition, different parts of a MIF file aren't independent on
the rest of the MIF file. There is something known as MIF inheritance
that may be difficult to get right if you could choose to not save
all of the contents.

It would be hard to know whether a MIF file was a complete version
of the document, unless you're forced to change the base file name.
This could be important if you want to be able to re-open the
MIF file in FM and expect to get the complete contents back.


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Thomas Michanek, FrameMaker/UNIX/MIF expert
Technical Writer, Uppsala, Sweden
mailto:Thomas.Michanek@telia.com
http://go.to/framers/
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