Should I want to do this?

[Jay Smith <jay@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

A client has approached me about a job and I am fighting with myself about
whether I want it or not.  The money would be good -- and would have to be. 
But the aggravation could be "priceless".

The clients has ALREADY created a 900-page book in Pagemaker.  (Yes,
Pagemaker; you read properly.)  There are some "formatting inconsistencies"
that would probably take as long to fix in Pagemaker (and then repaginate) as
moving the whole mess to FrameMaker (556 on Win95) and retagging it.

QUESTION #1:  What experiences have people had moving from Pagemaker to
Framemaker? (From what I can tell, the Pagemaker files contain essentially ONE
"story" each.)  The image files are linked (thank goodness) into the Pagemaker
files -- does anybody know if the links can be maintained in such a
conversion?

Next....

Furthermore, the entire publication is in color, with about 5-8 images per
page; each image is used only once in the book.  The images would be CMYK .EPS
files edited and proofed from Photoshop to the same printing equipment.

And... we would be printing at least 150 copies of the book on big color laser
printer/copiers (not desktop units), under tight color quality control
requirements (argh!).  Such machines are CMYK.  That is 135,000 impressions at
how much a page!?!  (The printer sales dude's eyes really lit up on this one! 
Do the math.)

Oops -- I forgot to mention that another similar book follows after this one,
but I should be able to do the whole thing in Framemaker from the start rather
than taking over an exiting job.

QUESTION #2:  I have heard a number of comments and references to printing
CMYK from Framemaker.  However, I have not fully followed nor understood what
problems were being encountered.  I should have paid more attention.  What can
y'all tell me about the types of problems that I might encounter in such a job
-- problems related to Frame and CMYK images?

============

QUESTION #3:  Am I nuts to even consider this?  Answer: Yes.


-- 
Jay Smith

e-mail: jay@jaysmith.com

The Press for History(tm), The Press for Education(tm), 
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