If you’re a FrameMaker user, or you have to work with FrameMaker documents, you can now do a little happy dance: DTPtools, after a year long public beta process, has finally released their MIF Filter for InDesign. This plug-in lets InDesign users open MIF (“maker interchange format”) files in InDesign.
According to their press release (sorry, I’m not a FrameMaker user, so I haven’t tried it), the plug-in will open FrameMaker’s MIF documents in InDesign, maintaining colors, paragraph and character styles, anchored frames, tables, graphic objects, sideheads, autonumbering, variables, and cross-references (though you will also want the Cross References plug-in to fully work with cross-references in InDesign). If you have a .FM document, you’ll have to open it in FrameMaker and save it as an MIF file.
The public beta process allowed the folks at DTP Tools to see how the plug-in worked with over a half million FrameMaker pages. They kept tweaking the plug-in until it now works incredibly well.
Now here’s the wacky part: They charge you per page saved. You can open and view your MIF files all day long without charge, but when you save a document, you’re charged by the page.
That way, if you’re not happy with the conversion, you’re not charged.
When you buy the plug-in, you’re buying page credits. For example, the least expensive option is 35 euros (DTP Tools switched their pricing from dollars to Euros about a month ago). With that amount, you can save up to 100 pages (.35 euro per page). If you buy more prepaid pages, you get a bigger discount (for example, it’s only .25 euro per page at 1,000 pages or .18 euro per page for 10,000 pages).
Given the target audience for this plug-in, their pricing option doesn’t seem unreasonable. Though it does bring up the typical worries, such as: What happens 10 years from now when you might not be able to buy more credits but you still need the plug-in.
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on December 4, 2007
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