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Structuring Documents with FrameBuilder

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Tools

mifmucker

What is mifmucker?

mifmucker is a Perl application for manipulating Frame documents and books. It operates as a general front end for passing Frame documents of any type through a series of independent filters for processing. Filters operate on a single representation of the document in memory; hence, you can use multiple filters simultaneously.

Note

Never use mifmucker on hawkwind--it is a resource-intensive process and slows the development of doctools.
Running mifmucker without any command line options 

% mifmucker
displays information about using mifmucker.

Filters

mifmucker includes default filters that were deemed widely useful. These filters all have individual capabilities, limitations, and options.

To get a list of available filters, enter 

% mifmucker -filters
For information and examples on the filter filtername, enter 

% mifmucker -usage filtername
The default set of available filters is

html
Converts Frame documents to HTML according to a map file
ascii
Converts Frame documents to formatted ASCII
search
Searches across frame documents (includes regular expressions)
readmif
Parser (internal only)
writemif
Write from memory to MIF file; used as a MIF generator
fixhead
Converts hanging headings (Frame 3.1 side-heads) into text flow

mifmucker tutorial

mifmucker is installed on icarus in /usr/local/doctools/bin/mifmucker.

To use mifmucker on a Frame book file named mybook.book, complete the following steps: 

% cd /where/your/book/file/is/located
% mifmucker -l -v 4.0 fixhead writemif mybook.book
For an individual Frame file named file.bld enter 

% mifmucker -l -v 4.0 fixhead writemif file.bld
If you have Frame docs that use the old side-head style of FrameMaker 3.1 (Figure 9), even if they are in 4.0 now, you can use mifmucker to convert to 4.0 and use the new side-head style of 4.0 (Figure 10).

mifmucker can also convert FrameMaker 3.1 tables and figures to 4.0 styles.

Frame 4.0 gives us the ability to have the H1 directly in the main text flow. No more hanging anchored frames, so it is easier to work with. Similarly, notes, cautions, and warnings are in the main text flow in Frame 4.0 templates.

For mifmucker to perform the side-head conversions, there are several guidelines:

  1. You must have followed standard Convex templates in your 3.1 docs. That is, H1's must be tagged H1, and so on. If you renamed your Paragraph tags, you are out of luck. Do not despair though. See Ken Harward (harward@convex.com, 497-4980); he may be able to help.
  2. You must apply the 4.0 templates put out by Peter to make it all look pretty after you finish converting. You can apply the templates to the entire book.
If something goes wrong, send Mr. Harward a path to the Frame file, the exact command line you entered, and the output from mifmucker (even if it is long).

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