Re: [docbook-apps] Frame to Docbook XML

[martin jakubik <martin.jakubik@solsoft.com>]

SIRIGINA Saraswathi wrote:

>Hi all,
> 
>Sorry to bother you all - but i need urgent help in converting a load of unstructured frame files with loads of platform specific conditional text to docbook xml. 
>  
>
I'd also love to be able to automate this. I'll be glad to hear if there 
are any suggestions.

> 
>Has anyone come across such a scenario, if so - could they please let me know how to go about it. Any script that can automate this process or any ideas/suggestions/advice/tweaks or additional inputs are most welcome. 
> 
>Please give me your valuable suggestions.
> 
>PS: I am using Adobe Framemaker 7.0 on Windows XP with WebWorks Publisher Professional 2003.
>  
>
One idea I have is to write a WebWorks Publisher project that will 
output DocBook. Since WebWorks can convert FrameMaker to 
somewhat-structured HTML, it should also, theoretically, be able to 
convert Frame to almost-DocBook.

For example, WebWorks macros can, keep track of the last "heading1" 
found in a Frame document, and thus can test, when encountering a new 
"heading1", or a "heading2", if they should write a closed </section> 
tag, or open a new <section>.

The WebWorks macros would need more complex logic than this to handle 
tables, or images that are encased in frames, etc, but once such a 
project was written, any FrameMaker user could use it to switch all 
their documents to DocBook! Wonderful.

Now the question is, who has the time to do it... Sorry, Sarah, that I 
can't be more help.