ADOBE FRAMEMAKER 10
MIF Reference
48
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Share files with earlier versions of FrameMaker
•
Perform custom document processing
•
Write import and export filters for FrameMaker documents
•
Perform database publishing
Sharing files with earlier versions
FrameMaker automatically opens documents created with an earlier version of FrameMaker (2.0 or higher).
To use an earlier version of FrameMaker (such as 5.5) to edit a document created with a later version of FrameMaker
(such as 7.0):
1
Use the newer FrameMaker product version to save the document in MIF.
2
Open the MIF file with the earlier version of FrameMaker.
Note:
Earlier versions of FrameMaker do not support all MIF statements in the current version. For example, when you
use version 5.5.6 or earlier of FrameMaker to open a document created in version 6.0 or later, MIF statements specifying
optimized PDF size are skipped. You can ignore the related error messages. However, to regain the optimized PDF size
you will need to use the
Optimize Pdf Size
command. For a description of the differences between MIF 7.0 and previous
versions, see , “MIF Compatibility.”
Modifying documents
You can use MIF to perform custom document processing. For example, you can create a program or write a series
of text editor macros to search for and change paragraph tags in a MIF file. You can also edit a MIF book file to easily
add or change document names in a book.
For an example of using MIF to easily update the values in a table, see
“Updating several values in a table” on
page 229
.
Writing filters
MIF allows you to write filters to convert data from other formats to FrameMaker format and to convert a MIF file
to another document format. While FrameMaker will change in future versions, MIF will always remain compatible
with earlier versions, so your filters can continue to write MIF files.
Import filters
MIF statements can completely describe a FrameMaker document or book file. Because documents created with
most word processors and text editors have fewer features than a FrameMaker document, your import filters
normally use only a subset of MIF statements.
To write an import filter, first determine which MIF statements describe the format of the input file. Then write a
program to translate the file from its original file format to MIF. If the imported document doesn’t use sophisticated
formatting and layout features, don’t include the corresponding MIF statements in your filter.
For example, if the file was created by a word processor, your filter should convert document text to a single
TextFlow
statement. Ignore line and page breaks (except forced breaks) in your source document, because the text
will be repaginated by the MIF interpreter. If the document uses style sheets, convert paragraph styles to paragraph
formats in a
PgfCatalog
statement, and convert table styles to table formats in a
TblCatalog
statement.