7.1 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 format overrides to paragraphs or characters. A format 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 format overrides, you gain these advantages:

• You can easily apply a global formatting change to all the paragraphs (or characters) having a given tag.
• You can apply a translating rule to the paragraphs (or characters) having a given tag with WebMaker.

The problem with using format overrides is that you cannot refer logically to the paragraphs that have the format 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 format overrides to characters, but not to paragraphs. See Section 3.3, "How to use format override rules".)

If your documents do contain format overrides, you can map them to HTML highlights. See Section 3.1, "Changing mappings".

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.