RE: Solving the Doc Review/Exchange Problem (long response)

[Andrew Becraft <andrew.becraft@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dan,

This is a very cool idea.

Unfortunately, the files S-Tagger generates from FrameMaker MIFs are not
RTFs in the truest sense. Although the file format itself is RTF, the
content of the file is itself a tagged format (like HTML and XML).
Essentially, S-Tagger distills long, complex MIF tags down to simpler tags
to enable translators to work with the text from the source FrameMaker
files. Within a very strict set of guidelines, translators can move, add,
and delete the S-Tags (for example, add or delete bolding based on a
language-specific style guide).

On the back end, S-Tagger expects "well-formed" S-Tags, and complains when
it encounters broken, missing or incorrectly nested tags. This is how the
formatting is maintained from the original source files (thus reducing
post-translation DTP work to almost nothing). I'd have to experiment with
S-Tagger (and don't have access to the tool at the moment), but I'm quite
certain that S-Tagger would either ignore or choke on any extra formatting
introduced during the proposed review process. This would include additions,
deletions, and comments (using Word's revision tracking features) from a
reviewer. If the review process you're suggesting simply made changes
directly (no revision tracking), this might be feasible.

Therefore, it looks like there's no easy way to incorporate reviewer changes
back into FrameMaker using a FM > MIF > ST > RTF > ST > MIF > FM approach.

There are three other approaches to the doc review/exchange problem that
I've either researched or personally been involved with:

* Output to PDF and have reviewers insert comments. This approach could take
advantage of Acrobat's digital signature feature, and the writer at the end
of the process could simply generate a list of the comments. The downside to
this approach is that the reviewer has to insert a comment for each change,
and it requires that the reviewer have the "full" version of Acrobat 5.0
(but only "Acrobat Standard" for 6.0, it seems).

* Output to RTF using something like Mif2Go, and then review in Word.
Because you can use revision tracking as well as comments, this approach
makes use of the advantages Word does indeed have over FrameMaker (not
something you'll hear me say often). If graphics aren't necessary, you don't
even need a third-party plug-in or conversion utility -- you can just Save
As from Frame.

* Switch to View Only and distribute to users with FrameViewer. I don't know
much about FrameViewer (is there even a 7.0 version?), and don't know if it
even has review capabilities. Based on the research I did last year, it's
not a particularly cost-effective solution, either, when compared to RTF or
PDF distribution.

None of these approaches integrate changes back into FrameMaker
automatically. I've used the PDF approach with some success, I haven't used
FrameViewer, and am now leaning toward the Mif2Go/RTF approach for future
work.

This is a problem I have yet to solve satisfactorily myself, so are there
any other ideas out there?

-Andrew
 x4274


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