FrameAC: FDK/FrameScript Alternative for VB, VBScript, and COM
FrameAC brings the power of the Framemaker FDK APIs to any language on the Windows platform that can call COM objects (which is just about any language on Windows, really: Visual Basic, VB Script, Javascript… you name it). It will also be upgraded shortly to support the .Net languages, like C# and VB.Net, so you can call it from managed code. It should integrate with other applications and languages far better than the venerable FrameScript language.
The description from the developers, Mekon Technology, reads, in part:
What can FrameAC do?
FrameAC can be used to implement almost anything a FrameMaker user can do manually. It provides all the power and flexibility of Visual Basic in conjunction with FrameMaker.
FrameAC includes a scripting environment that you can use to create scripts that manipulate FrameMaker objects and documents. You can use these scripts to automate a wide range of tasks you perform manually. You can also use the Event Editor to run scripts when triggered by FrameMaker events or keyboard commands. Scripts can be written using VBScript or Javascript.
You can use FrameAC to develop three types of application:-
- ActiveX plug-ins
- Controller applications
- Runtime scripts
FrameAC scripts
FrameAC includes a scripting environment that you can use to create scripts that manipulate FrameMaker documents and objects. You can use these scripts to automate a wide range of tasks you perform manually.
Scripts can also interact with your FrameAC application enabling user level control over more complex systems.
You can create the following types of scripts:
- Visual Basic scripts (VBS)
- JavaScript scripts
- Event-triggered scripts
- Menu driven scripts.
How it works
FrameAC provides an application programming interface (API) to automation controllers via COM such as Visual Basic. Therefore FrameAC can also be used with any programming tool that supports COM. FrameAC uses an Object Oriented model thus making it an ActiveX COM Object. This means that when an object is created and instantiated all properties and methods for this object become available. This leads to a reduction in development time as the programmer is able to see immediately what methods/properties are available on the object that they are using.
Alas, the license is expensive– 150 Euros per head, in small quantities– but if you don’t have a large number of users and don’t have C programming skills (or the time to hassle with C coding) it may be worth the cost.
There’s also a Yahoo Groups mailing list about FrameAC: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/frameac/
Post a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.