FM2Pages - FrameMaker Plugin

FM2Pages is an export filter for FrameMaker versions 8, 9, 10 and 11 that lets you save an FM file directly to an Apple Pages file.

Pages can open an RTF or DOC file, but it seems that when you import an RTF into Pages, you lose any named styles (the formatting remains, but the style associations are gone). FrameMaker exports to RTF, and can theoretically export to DOC (but this seems to not always work well). To get a file in the Pages format, you'll need to do one of the following:

• save from FM to DOC, then open in Pages
• save from FM to RTF, then open in Word (or OpenOffice), and save that to DOC, then open in Pages

Regardless of the path, you'll find that not all of the content will always survive the process. Images, cross-refs, etc., may not show up in the Pages file.

This plugin will eventually provide a direct path from FrameMaker to Pages that preserves as much of the formatting as possible.

But why would someone want do this? .. Good question. If you're interested in publishing your existing FrameMaker-based content as an Apple "iBook" (through the Apple iBooks Author application), you'll need to get that content into Pages (since that's the only useful import option for iBooks Author).

This tool is currently only available for beta testing, and currently only preserves named paragraph styles, but we're working on adding support for more formatting and document properties. We'd like to get your input on this process and where to focus our efforts.

Contact us for a beta version.