Miriam asked about the benefits of structured Frame. Fred Ridder suggested that the payoff for a small writing group might not be big.
This question comes up periodically on this list, but I guess it is always new to someone and therefore always worth answering. I too am a sole writer. I've been using structured Frame since Frame 7 came out. I think it is well worth the effort even if you don't have to do any of the things that Fred mentions in his list of good reasons for structured authoring. Unless you are really good about following a style guide, an unstructured doc set eventually accrues all sorts of inconsistencies, both deliberate and unintentional. The process of designing a good EDD and migrating your files to it will help weed out these inconsistencies and get your doc set into real good shape. Then, going forward, the formatting rules built into your structure will help ensure consistency. You won't have to remember which of all your para and char formats you have to use in which situations. You just have to remember that a para goes under a section, a listItem does under a list, and so on. You wrap a class name in a class element and so on. Everything works. You will also be able to take advantage of a variety of plug-ins that take advantage of structured Frame and make life easier. You should expect to continue to revise your EDD over time, since you won't think of everything the first time through. Sometimes that forces you to do some revising of manuals, because you've come up with a more elegant structure, but often you just have to reimport the EDD and everything magically works. Just think of it as a better work environment than an unstructured app and don't worry about single-sourcing and translation, etc. (unless you really do have to worry about those things.) Fred -- Fred Wersan Senior Technical Writer MAK Technologies 68 Moulton St. Cambridge, MA 02138 617-876-8085
