3 FrameMaker Style Recommendations

3.1 Use the paragraph and character catalogues

The basic principle is that you should create a template containing the paragraph tags and character tags that you need, and you should use the paragraph and character tags consistently. In particular, do not make local overrides to paragraphs or characters. A local override is a change that you make to one or more selected paragraphs or characters, without creating a paragraph or character tag that defines the format.

If you use paragraph and character tags consistently, and you do not use local overrides, you gain these advantages:

The problem with using local overrides is that you cannot refer logically to the paragraphs that have the local overrides. Thus, although you have carefully selected them and applied formatting to them in the FrameMaker document, you cannot apply a global change to all of them, and you cannot apply a translating rule to them with WebMaker. (WebMaker does provide a facility for handling local overrides to characters, but not to paragraphs. See "Overview of untagged character rules" on page 39.)

Sometimes it is tempting to solve a formatting problem with a quick fix using FrameMaker's formatting capabilities, but we recommend resisting that temptation. If you use paragraph and character tags consistently, you make it easier to maintain the printed document, and you create a document that is easy to convert to HTML.

WebMaker User Guide - 27 SEP 1995

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