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  • Re: Script to convert FrameMaker (OS9) documents

    From Tim Murray@no-spam@thankyou.com to comp.sys.mac.system,comp.text.frame on Friday, April 07, 2006 00:02:35
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    On Apr 4, 2006, Marc Heusser wrote:
    Preparing for the arrival of my MacBookPro (after my 17" G4 has been
    stolen :-( I need to convert thousands of documents (from 1988 onwards
    up to 2005) as FrameMaker does not run anymore on Intel Macs (never been ported to Mac OS X, my last OS 9 application).
    As far as I know it is fairly well controllable from the outside with AppleScript?
    I'd need to open every .fm (FrameMaker) document, save as MIF (special
    Frame Maker Interchange format, similar to XML, ascii), save as text and save as PostScript (using print dialog) to be converted to .pdf
    afterwards by Adobe Distiller (3.0, still running under OS 9) or Quartz/Preview (Mac OS X).
    How do I do that automatically, ie traversing entire hierarchies of
    folders, searching for those files, and opening them one after the other while saving in 3 formats each?
    I have never used AppleScript or such, code examples/fragments to
    achieve the above would be most helpful (either using OS 9 tools or Mac
    OS X).


    I would not be so quick to write off using Frame. There are solutions for running pre-OS X applications without Classic per se, and further, with http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/mac/ and Apple Boot Camp,
    you can -- probably -- run Windows Frame.

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  • From Michael Laajanen@michael_laajanen@yahoo.com to comp.sys.mac.system on Sunday, April 09, 2006 09:37:38
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    Hi,

    Marc Heusser wrote:
    Preparing for the arrival of my MacBookPro (after my 17" G4 has been
    stolen :-( I need to convert thousands of documents (from 1988 onwards
    up to 2005) as FrameMaker does not run anymore on Intel Macs (never been ported to Mac OS X, my last OS 9 application).
    As far as I know it is fairly well controllable from the outside with AppleScript?
    I'd need to open every .fm (FrameMaker) document, save as MIF (special
    Frame Maker Interchange format, similar to XML, ascii), save as text and save as PostScript (using print dialog) to be converted to .pdf
    afterwards by Adobe Distiller (3.0, still running under OS 9) or Quartz/Preview (Mac OS X).
    How do I do that automatically, ie traversing entire hierarchies of
    folders, searching for those files, and opening them one after the other while saving in 3 formats each?
    I have never used AppleScript or such, code examples/fragments to
    achieve the above would be most helpful (either using OS 9 tools or Mac
    OS X).

    TIA

    Marc

    Why not get a used Sun Solaris box and upgrade to 7.2 on Unix, then you
    will be safe for a long time.

    Then you can access all your FM documents by means of a X-server
    connected to the Sun box from any computer, MAC PPC, MAC Intel or even
    Linux out of the box :)

    It sounds like a huge waste of time to convert tons of documents made in
    FM, IMHO in theory it is possible but practically no you will need so
    much "hands on" the converted documents that you will go crazy.

    Ask yourself how much your time is worth!


    /michael
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