Setting the ground rules
Working with templates is really about defining and enforcing standards. In this module you’ll evaluate your existing content, and set up standards that will help you create a framework for the rest of your template development.
- FrameMaker Workgroup Standards
- Define a template, and explain a template-based workflow
- Establish naming conventions for Styles
- Refine Tag Names (Paragraph, Character, Object, etc.)
After this lesson, you’ll have a clear understanding of how the pieces of the template fit together and have a checklist of things you’ll want to develop in your own template.
Poppin’ tags
The heart of a FrameMaker template is a combination of paragraph, character, and table formats. These styles are loosely referred to as “tags” and when you get them all working together, they can start slashing time spent formatting.
- Creating Character Tags
- Creating Paragraph Tags covering:
- all 8 tabs of the Paragraph Designer
- Right to Left languages
- Extensive Autonumbering material
Once you’ve gotten the necessary tags created in your template, you’ll have enough to start using your template in your own work. While the template is far from finished, the organizational work is mostly out of the way, and you’ll be using these styles to identify content, not describe formatting.
What are those reference and master pages for, anyway?
FrameMaker content is created on body pages, but the master and reference pages contain valuable tools for presenting information and creating generated tables of contents and other files.
- Master Page Definition
- Sideheads and multiple columns
- Automatically Assign Master Pages
- Defining TOC Reference Page
- Defining Indexes and Index Reference Pages
- Setting up Template file Document Properties
- BONUS: TOC Swipe File
- BONUS: Index Swipe File
After this lesson, you’ll have branded pages, along with beautiful tables of contents and indexes. With formatting and page assignments controlled automatically, you’re now freed up to focus on content, rather than proofreading.
Setting up for the long-term
FrameMaker is for long docs, and docs with a long lifespan. In this lesson you’ll set up the things your users will need to quickly create and manage sophisticated, referenced information, like:
- Setting up Table Formats
- Defining Colors
- Defining Variables
- Defining Cross-Reference Formats
After this lesson, your users will be able to control table formatting at the book level, and create full, working references to other FrameMaker docs with the click of a button. You’ll understand how colors can be used across various aspects of your template, including autonumbering strings.
A lever long enough to move the world
A FrameMaker template is at its heart a way to leverage your effort. Will it move the world? Well that depends upon what you write with it! After this lesson, at least you won’t need to repeat yourself quite so much. Because here is where you’ll finish setting up content and formatting reuse in your documents.
- Defining Conditional Text Settings
- Defining Object Styles
- Managing Templates with a Template Book
- BONUS: Template Evaluation Tool
Conditional text and Object styles are two topics that don’t get quite the attention they deserve, so buckle in and get ready to crank production up yet another notch.
The students have become the masters!
I’ll take suggestions on what you’d like to see most (either new or review topics) and run the session accordingly. Got it all figured out? That’s great, but you still have plenty of deep dive topics you can learn about, including:
- Maker.ini hacks
- Using free scripts, or ones that pay for themselves
- Footnotes
- Digital Publishing Overview
After this lesson, you’ll have a complete working template, and the skills to use it!
