How to handle shared FrameMaker files

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Jeanne_W
Propeller Head
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2016 11:50 pm

How to handle shared FrameMaker files

Post by Jeanne_W »

Hi, I am in the process of importing our content from FrameMaker 11 to Flare 12. We have several FM books that share some of the same files. For example we have a user guide and an express user guide. The latter only includes a subset of the chapters/files included in the user guide, but it also includes chapters that are not shared. So my question is: what's the best way to handle file sharing on import? Do I import each FM book into a separate project? If so, do I then have to export the shared files to a global project afterwards and link that to both projects? Or is there a way to import both books into the same Flare project but have separate TOCs?

Thanks a lot,
Jeanne
trishe57
Propeller Head
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2016 8:27 am

Re: How to handle shared FrameMaker files

Post by trishe57 »

If it were me, I'd import the files (lowest level), then recreate the books using different TOCs, and possibly different targets. I believe that Flare will break your books up for you, but that takes some planning.

My preference is to start with the smalles chunks possible. Depending on how you break tthe Frame files up, they become your topics. You can easily assemble the topics into chapters/books.

In my case, we use text insets for reusable content. The text insets are imported into procedure documents, which are then assembled into chapters in a very large service manual. To convert to Flare, we tried importing the Procedure document and breaking that up on import (works, but is a lot of work to set up). Then we tried importing the files that are used as the text insets, and using TOCs to rebuild the procedures, chapters, and books. That looks to be the most flexible for us.

HTH!
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