This is the home page for "mm2frame", a program for translating documents using the troff/mm macros into Adobe Framemaker. This software is released as open source/free software under the General Public License (GPL). I've only tested the program on some Unix machines; I don't know what else it runs on.

This is a VERY simplistic translator. It does not handle preprocessor commands, such as tables, equations, or pictures (tbl, eqn, pic), it ignores many parameters, it ignores all MM variables, and handles only a limited subset of the MM commands. Commands the translator doesn't understand are included in the resulting Framemaker document as regular text.

Nevertheless, this is helpful for documents which use (at least mostly) a subset of the MM commands. It certainly beats doing it ALL by hand, and I'm unaware of any other tool that does this. I've found it handy when I needed it, and over 30 people that I know of have requested it from me (there may be more people who have used it, since I don't restrict redistribution).

The translator handles the following MM commands: italics (\fI, .ft I or .I), bold (\fB, .ft B or .B), normal (\fP, \fR, .R or .ft R), headers (.H 1-3), dashed and bold lists (.DL/.BL - .LI - .LE; can't embed them), don't fill/fill (.nf/.fi), paragraph (.P), and center (.ce no arguments, creates a Title paragraph). The vertical space commands (.sp, .SP, .SK, and .bp) are interpreted as new-paragraph commands. The table begin and end commands (.TS/.TE) and displays (.DS or .DF /.DE) will cause each line to be its own Framemaker paragraph (as don't fill/fill do) in order to make translating easier. Special characters such as double-backslash, angle brackets, dagger, logical not, em dash, and double quote marks (both directions) are translated as well.

I'm no longer maintaining this software, If you're interested in taking over maintenance of it, let me know. The software includes extensive design documentation, which should help you get started.

You can look at the installation instructions and the user and design documentation. Most importantly, you can download the actual mm2frame software (as a shar archive).

You can go up and look at my main web site.