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Re: [xsl] Converting from Framemaker to XML

2007-04-26 07:36:53
Hi Lech,

From what I read about it, the Framemaker XML is pretty well documented (http://www.adobe.com/products/framemaker/pdfs/faq_xml.pdf for a start). You seem to look for simplicity and automation. It is far from simple to convert legacy code to XML, and it's hardly expected that the resulting XML will be as good as the XML from Framemaker XML. Framemaker itself can be automated. If you have *.fm files and you need them converted, try to use Framemaker in a batch environment for converting them to XML.

If you opt for simplicity you should stay far from trial-and-error tools that may do some kind of fm-to-xml conversion. Instead, use the XML that is well-documented. I doubt if anyone around has tried to re-engineer the conversion provided already by Adobe, but if anybody did, I'd still go for stability and well-documented / supported tooling, i.e., Adobe Framemaker XML by Framemaker.

Did you notice that you can let Framemaker do the XSLT transformation on import/export?

Cheers,
-- Abel Braaksma

Lech Rzedzicki wrote:
Hi.

I would like to spend as much time with XSL as I can, but in order to
do that, I need to have the XML for processing in the first place.
Much of the data that I work on is .fm format (unstructured
Framemaker) and I am investigating various methods of converting that
to XML with the least amount of manual labour, while keeping most of
the formatting.

There are many ways do it straight from fm, using .mif or RTF
intermediately, or using .ps/PDF and using visual styles as hints for
XML tags etc.
The new Framemaker 7.x itself can also go to XML mode, with it's EDD
styles being the equivalent of DTD and so on.

But what I'm looking for is simplicity and automation.
Can you recommend any free/open-source tools that I could use to go
FM->XML, while preserving as much formatting metadata as possible
(layout, headings, tables etc)?

Any help is deeply appreciated,



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