I wrote my first two books by creating huge outlines in ThinkTank or MORE, and importing them into Framemaker. The last book was published in 2001 using Frame 5 or a Mac (grumble grumble). The MORE-to-Frame conversion created five levels of headings which became chapters, sections, subsections, on down to some bulleted lists. At the leaf level I could include a summary paragraph that I'd use as a starting point for the real writing.
I'm halfway through a new project (just converted from Frame 7 to 9) and I miss the old flexibility. The current crop of outliners are garbage. The MS Word outline format doesn't seem to bring format tags into Frame, so you lose the hierarchy. The only outlining tool that is close to MORE is a now-unsupported screenwriting tool. And its import ability makes it nearly useless, too. I know how to build a structured document in Frame, but I see no no easy way to work with structure pieces at a macro level, like "Move section 3.2 to under 5.3" except by selecting and moving multi-page chunks of text. I've read about DITA and I'd love to use a database to store chunks of the document (that's how I think) but these solutions seem to require server-level implementations or unexplained bits of additional software. Rick Smith http://www.cryptosmith.com/ _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to fram...@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
