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 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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