FrameMaker MIF to RTF

We’ve found that Help topic files compile much better if you use referenced external graphics rather than embedded graphics. So when we convert for Help use, we place each internal Frame graphic into its own external metafile, named according to the first five characters of the output RTF file name, plus a three-digit sequence number. We put this in the same directory as the output file, and write the reference to it into the RTF file. We do the same with imported graphics (usually bitmaps) provided they have a FrameImage facet, or are in a bitmap format we process (such as Sun Raster or DIB).

For external referenced graphics, the action depends on the graphic type. For external .bmp files, we wrap the image in a metafile, just as though the image was internal; that preserves sizing information. If the graphic file name or extension is "mapped" in the .ini file, we change the name or extension accordingly. For example, if you have a batch of .gif files imported by reference, and have a "gif=bmp" map entry, we look for a .bmp with the same name as each .gif (which you can produce using an external graphics converter such as Graphics Workshop, $45 shareware, not included) and use that file instead. When the document includes FrameMath equations, we use Frame’s internal graphics export filters to save them as WMFs for use in WinHelp. (You can tell Mif2Go to do the same with the rest of your graphics, but resolution will be better if you use an external converter like GW.) Otherwise, we write in the file name just as it is in the Frame file, without its original path if that option is set in the .ini file, without attempting any conversion.

Sometimes you may need to convert a document that contains imported graphics in formats that the filter dosn’t support. We help you do this by writing out these internal graphics as external graphic files of their native type. For example, imported Corel Draw graphics become .cdr files. Now you can handle the conversion to .bmp or .wmf with any convenient tools. But we go one step farther for you. Suppose you just have WinWord to work with. When you run the filter to make a WinWord RTF file, the filter embeds IMPORT fields for the Corel graphics; when you load the RTF file in Word, you will see Word busily importing all your graphics. When you look at the file, there they are, because Word just converted them to internal WMFs. So far so good; now what if you want to use them in WinHelp? Word won’t export the WMFs for you... so now you save the Word file in RTF again, and run our exwmf utility on that RTF file. Out come the WMFs as external files, all ready to use in WinHelp, named according to their original files so that when you run the filter again to make WinHelp RTF, it can pick them up and put them in place. And you can script the whole thing in a simple batch file.

We haven’t forgotten the special-character issues, either. We convert dashes into one or more hyphens, and curly quotes into straight. For subscripts and superscripts, we make character-aligned external metafiles, and write their references to the RTF file. And we automatically replace any Zapf Dingbats with a character-aligned bitmap, called bullet.bmp. You can also assign any font as a placeholder for bitmaps, then assign individual characters to different bitmaps; this is handy for keycap representation.

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