An important part of designing print documentation involves knowing the common format and style characteristics of printed technical documentation and knowing how to implement those characteristics in your desktop-publishing software in the form of templates and tags.
See the FrameMaker resource page for additional study materials. Got a question about this project? Post it in the FrameMaker FAQ This tags assignment is the first step in that process. You'll look at printed technical documentation from the computer industry for the way such elements as headings, lists, tables, notices, and highlighting are designed, and use your DTP software to match the formatting in the pdf (for Print Documentation students at ACC, FrameMaker is the required software).
- Download the frame_tags1.PDF and the frame_tags1.mif documents.
- Open the pdf. This is what you will make your mif look like.
- Using Framemaker, open the mif. Instructions are there for you.
You may get error messages when opening the mif, such as font substitution notices. Ignore this. Also ignore any "unresolved cross-reference" error notices.
- After you finish the exercise, choose three paragraph or character tags and note the following:
- Font name
- Language
- Type size (points or inches)
- Line spacing (points or inches)
- Left and right margins (points or inches)
- Top and bottom margins (points or inches)
- Graphic elements (lines, boxes, icons, etc.)
- Bullet or numbering tag
- Hanging indent
Check the document in FrameMaker for exact font names, types sizes, margins, and so on.
- To present this information, develop one or more tables with rows for the characteristics and columns for the individual styles you've chosen. For students taking ETWR2472 at ACC, please design these tables in FrameMaker.
Make this project a FrameMaker file, and name it using your first name, an underscore, your last name, 02a for the assignment number and draft, anding with .fm as the file extension. For example, if your name is Charlie Brown, name the first draft of this project charlie_brown02a.fm; the first revision, charlie_brown02b.fm, and so on.
Send this file as an e-mail attachment to your instructor. Expect to receive e-mail confirmation that your instructor has received your files. If not, contact your instructor.
Information provided by hcexres@io.com.