AXCM Plugin - West Street Consulting

Products >>	FrameSLT	Structure Tools
	AXCM	InsetPlus
	XRef Wizard	WS Utilities

AXCM (formerly ABCM)

(Download)

NOTE TO ALL USERS

The 2.00 release of AXCM contains significant new functionality and has also undergone a series of fundamental changes with its internal processing. While we have made a strong effort to ensure that it is stable and working as designed, it would not be a surprise if issues are discovered as its use becomes more widespread. Although the software is free, we do care that it is a quality product. Please let us know if you encounter any problems with it.

If you are an existing 1.00 user, we recommend testing it with your current files before deploying it in a production environment. You can install with ABCM 1.00 and run it at the same time. In AXCM 2.00, all existing 1.00 functionality should still be operational, in addition to the new 2.00 features. We won't go so far as to call it beta software, but we will continue to keep version 1.00 available if for any reason you still need it. Thank you.

AXCM is a comprehensive conditional text replacement tool for structured Frame, allowing you to use structural markup to indicate and manage your conditions, instead of traditional conditional text tags. This methodology, along with the advanced features of the plugin, provides the following advantages:

Conditional evaluations based on XPath expressions, allowing the most powerful and flexible coloring and filtering criteria ever available within FrameMaker
Simplified management of multiple, overlapping conditions
Whole file conditionalization within a book
Detailed coloring of single and overlapping conditions as you specify, eliminating the automatic assignment of magenta text
Natural preservation of conditions through XML and SGML roundtripping, including support for tokenized strings of values
Storage of an unlimited amount of non-publishable material (such as authoring comments and draft content) in your source files, with a guarantee that it will always be removed before publishing
Convenience of element boundaries to delimit conditions, rather than error-prone condition tags
Simplified show/hide process, using "schemes" to program and run the filtering logic (no more Show/Hide box confusion!)

AXCM is distributed as fully-functional freeware. It includes a comprehensive user guide and a tutorial to get you started.

If you rely on conditional text, which many authors do, AXCM may be your answer to liberating yourself from the frustrations of the traditional FrameMaker feature. If you are not using structured FrameMaker yet, this software may be reason enough to convert.

As an added benefit, the major functionality of AXCM is exposed through the FrameMaker API, available for automation through other API clients or third-party scripting tools. See the User Guide for more information.

Note that AXCM offers a broad scope of functionality related to conditional text, far more than native conditional text features within FrameMaker. The amount of functionality can seem complex and daunting to new users. If you have questions about how to get started with it, the installation package includes tutorials for a basic introduction. Also, feel free to contact us any time for recommendations.