Subtitles of the Movie

In this video tutorial I want to take you through how to work with the Compare Documents features inside Adobe FrameMaker 9. In order to work with it you need to have two documents that are relatively similar but have differences; that is, don't try to compare a newsletter with a brochure. If they are two dramatically different documents with no similarities this function isn't going to be useful, but if you have an old document, such as the one that's seen here and a new document where some of the updates, such as the Title and some of the information for the Course-at-a-Glance has been changed or added, or something like the Prerequisite is new and the Objectives have been modified a bit, this is an ideal utility. Make sure that your new document is the selected file but also make sure that your old document is still open. In this case my old document is the TemplateDesignOLD and my new document is the TemplateDesign.fm file. Since my new file is the active file and it's selected I'm going to go in and choose File, work my way down to Utilities and choose the Compare Documents. FrameMaker prompts me, assuming that the new document is the one that I currently have selected, but if I had more files open I would see them under the older document and I'd have to select the appropriate file. In this case I only have the one, the TemplateDesignOLD and I'm going to tell it to build both a Summary and a Composite document and before I click the Compare I'm going to show you some of the options that are available by clicking the Options button and this is not something that you generally need to modify every single time. As you get comfortable and familiar with the default, it's probably best to work with it. I can specify which Condition Tag to use for all insertions and for all deleted content either using the default called Inserted or Deleted, or I could create a Custom Tag with my own names. I could also specify that I don't want to see any condition applied to Insertions or to Deletions. The Marked Changes with Change Bars is a nice option; it'll put a black line running down the side of the page in order to show me where the modification is and the Create Hypertext Links in Summary will give me a Summary document with Hyperlinks so that I can click on a specific piece of information and jump to either the Composite document, my Current New Document, or my existing Legacy OLD document. I'm just going to Cancel this and leave the defaults and click Compare. After a moment, FrameMaker builds a new document and this is the comparison file and I'll come back to it in a moment; and it also builds a Summary file. The Summary file is a list of all of the modifications that were made between the two documents. As mentioned these are Hyperlinks as well, so if I come through my document and I hover over a number and I click it jumps me to that location inside the file. Here my insertion point is at the beginning at the word Adobe, if I go back to my Summary and I click by the Composite for Templates the insertion points jumps into the new file as well, into the one that reads Adobe. If I'm working with my Summary and I jump into the older, where I have a five-day, or the newer where I have a three-day I can see that in the new document it jumps into the Adobe FrameMaker 9 where I have a three-day Course and if in my Summary I jump into the older version I can see that I'm in my FrameMaker Template Development where I have a five-day Course. So, the Summary is a nice way to track the changes that you've made but it doesn't necessarily give you the visual overview that the Composite document does. The Composite document shows me both the before and the after rolled together into one file. By using my Special, Conditional Text and then showing and hiding conditions, I can actually go in and specify which ones to show. Currently it's showing Deleted and Inserted, but by double-clicking Deleted I'm only going to see what's inserted and then I Apply. This would give me a quick way to preview my document as it would appear with the inserted content approved, all of the changes. If I reverse those by double-clicking and I show the Deleted I see the before version of it. Very noticeable changes are going to be up here where it reads FrameMaker Template Development and just above the Objective and even into some of the bullets. If I switch these from the Deleted back to the Inserted and I apply the change I can see that the Title has changed to the three-day and the entire Prerequisite has been added in. So, any time that you have two documents that are similar but different enough that it's taking time to visually compare them you can use the Compare feature inside FrameMaker to build a Summary and a Composite document and within the Composite document if required you can go in and use Conditions to show the before or the after and highlight the change. This is a great way to create a PDF that you can hand off to a reviewer to show exactly what has been added, what has been deleted, or both at the same time.