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ISSUE: April 2007 In This Issue: |
New Framemaker Plug-in Makes Revision Control Fast and Easy There’s a useful new tool out for Adobe® FrameMaker™ users that lets you track changes just like you do in Microsoft® Word™ documents. Oak Hill tried it out and found that it’s easy to use and helpful in keeping track of changes to documents that multiple writers are editing. Content developers will typically use either Word or FrameMaker to create their documents. These programs each have their pros and cons, but Word has always outshined FrameMaker for tracking changes during revisions. In Word, it’s easy to see any change made to text—even a single letter or added space, whereas in FrameMaker, only the line containing the change is marked, but there’s no information about who made the change or what the change was. The problem is, longer documents, such as books and manuals, are usually created in FrameMaker, and often require multiple reviewers. Keeping track of additions, deletions and document versions becomes a nightmare, and if a change needs clarification, it can be difficult to track down who made the change. TrackChanges, a new plug-in tool from Information Technologies, introduces revision control to FrameMaker documents, allowing users to monitor, accept and reject changes, just like the Track Changes tool in Word. The tool offers multi-user editing support to streamline review cycles that require input from multiple writers. A “What-if” feature allows you to check the structural integrity of proposed changes for on-the-spot editing. Plus, TrackChanges allows you to identify added and deleted text using color- and style-coding, and you can accept and reject changes, both individually and globally, just like in Word. You can choose whether to view the markups or not with a single mouse click. TrackChanges uses conditional text to show additions as "Inserted at Review" and deletions as "Removed at Review.” You can configure both types of tags for appearance, and they act as any other conditional text item in FrameMaker. You can also print with changes marked or unmarked, without manually changing anything in the document. Being able to move from change to change with a the click of a mouse means you don’t have to waste time using the Search feature. The plug-in is also very easy to install, use and remove. The TrackChanges plug-in lets you:
One drawback is that you still can’t identify changes by author. Additionally, the tool doesn’t activate FrameMaker’s revision bars. One other thing—the tool does not ask for confirmation if you select “Accept All Changes.” However, in general, TrackChanges allows FrameMaker users to more effectively manage the editing process. How to get it |