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FrameMaker 8.0 Product Review (continued)What's in this article:
Work smarter with contentTrack text edits
This is a glorified version of conditional text that automatically inserts markup for content as it is added or deleted. It is a bit like a dynamic document comparison in FrameMaker. However, the enhanced set of options (including a toolbar to work through the document) available to manage the tracked content is really nice.
While the feature is nice, it is also a feature that competing tools have had (both Word and XMetaL already have similar features available) so it is not a showstopper. Other tools have more robust versions of this, so if it’s crucial, look elsewhere. That being said, it is nice to have this as an option. For people who have to do a lot of little text edits, the ability to track what you have done is fantastic. You can turn around an updated document showing the edits inline very quickly. If this describes your work environment then this feature alone could be well worth the cost of the upgrade. Conditional content
Overlapping conditions now support AND, OR and NOT features. This means that you can specify content be conditional for multiple products, audiences or platforms and overlap them. Then, when needed, you can specify a display that includes specific mixes of conditions. In the past, all conditional content was treated as OR content. That meant that any content that was conditionalized would show up regardless of an overlap. In the new version you can specify the combinations you need to manage and display or hide content as you desire. If you want to show content that is conditional in Help AND for Windows, you can build it.
Overlapping conditions are no longer magenta either. Custom colours are used and applied dynamically when more than one condition is applied. Now the really bad news. The names used in the expression editor are horrible. If you have content that has a variety of combinations and you need to develop a clearly named way to show and hide it, be ready for disappointment. If you have Mac specific types of PDF output as well as Windows and Unix versions of materials, then the expressions and the names may appear as seen below. Not pretty. With no way to create a human friendly name you can expect a decent amount of frustration early on as you try to construct the right combinations.
For clients using overlapping conditional content this is worth the upgrade on its own. |
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Not to be confused with the Microsoft Word feature called Track Changes. Microsoft tracks a wide set of changes including formatting modifications, reorganization of content, layout modifications and more. Adobe tracks text edits.
For anyone who has had to suffer conditional content in the past this version has a major modification. If all you do is use conditional content in a very traditional sense, then you may not see the difference. However, if you overlap any conditions, prepare for a nice surprise. The Expression.
