Phil Suh and DTP
Phil Suh, phil@gaijins.com, has a question for people with experience scripting Quark XPress and/or FrameMaker.Phil Suh and DTP
OK, this is one for all you DTP heavyweights out there.
I'm project manager for a manual translation project: we're translating three manuals from English to Japanese. The English data is in Framemaker, we're using 5.5. The output has to be in Quark 3.3J. I also have some older Japanese manuals, with sections that don't need updating, they can be poured straight into the new Japanese manuals.
I'm trying to create an effficient workflow for this project -- getting data, tracking translations, making screenshots and putting them in the right places. I thought that perhaps creating a Filemaker database of the book contents would be a good way to keep track of what's completed, in translation, needing screenshots, etc.
The database would have one record for each section and subsection of each manual. The record would contain old data (English), the new data (Japanese), and metadata--translation status, who's working on it, what other data is available, etc.
The dream is to make the database, then suck in the data from Framemaker via scripts. The translators work out of the database, and when it's all finished, we use scripts to pour everything into Quark.
By now it should be glaringly apparent that I know nothing about Framemaker, Quark, or scripting either of them.
I would like to learn as much as possible ASAP. I'd love to hear from those who have experience, application glue tables, sample scripts, and so on.
Is the dream possible? What obstacles lie ahead? What would you do if you had to tackle this?
Thanks in advance,
Phil
PS: Due at the end of January, no less <grin>.
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