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LIGHTING MANUFACTURER SHINES WITH FRAMEMAKER BASED CATALOGS
In the lighting industry, sales success hinges on getting up-to-date information to electrical distributors, architects, and specifying engineers. Hubbell Lighting, Inc. (HLI), a full-line lighting manufacturer, decided to produce an electronic version of its paper catalog and distribute it on CD-ROM. "Our goals were to increase convenience by letting customers easily search our catalog, reduce production costs, and speed updates," says Kathryn Folden, graphics communications specialist.
Aided by Adobe partner Finite Matters, Ltd., Hubbell Lighting introduced its catalog, called LightGear™, in August 1995, with updates issued biannually. To date, LightGear is the only fully interactive, multimedia CD-ROM catalog in the lighting industry. FrameMaker Simplifies Electronic Document Development
Extensive API Enables Interactive Features HLI credits several features of FrameMaker with its ability to easily update the CD-ROM. The next step was to locate the partners necessary to solidify HLI's vision. Finite Matters Ltd. (FML) of Goochland, Virginia, is the FrameMaker reseller and systems integrator that customized the interface to meet HLI's requirements. "The Frame Developer's Kit is the greatest hidden story of FrameMaker," says Ben Slone, president of FML. "It handles enormous complexity while providing the flexibility to create a completely custom interface." To create a search-and-retrieval index, FML used FrameViewer® Pro, which contains Verity's Topic search engine. Customers can find documents about particular products simply by entering a word or phrase in the search dialog box. Hyperlinks to documents satisfying the query appear in a list. At the direction of HLI, Finite Matters also used the FDK to create a Spec Page Module for version 2.0 of LightGear. It uses a database interface that enables HLI representatives to quickly locate lighting products and test data, and use it to create specification pages for inclusion in customer proposals. The information contained in these reports is vital - it can make or break a proposal. Before LightGear, specifiers had to rely on printed information, which was not always current. Now the user enters a catalog number and then is presented with a dialog box to select a specific product. When a product catalog number is chosen, the application extracts the test data from a Microsoft® Access® database on the CD-ROM and performs lighting photometric calculations. Some of the calculation results are plotted. Using the FDK, the application then inserts tables and plots into the specification page, which the representative can print for the customer. Because presentation and time constraints can be as important as facts in winning a sale, HLI was determined to develop a complete package for users. "We wanted our users to be able to customize output according to project specifications, including job name, fixture type, and submitted-by information," says Slone. HLI and FML joined forces to develop a point-and-click interface that users could relate to. Users simply click in the Project or Remarks block to view a dialog box for entering the project or customer name. HLI designed the catalog layout in landscape format according to screen parameters rather than the usual portrait format used for printed catalogs. "We wanted users to feel like they were surfing the Net, not just thumbing through a screen reproduction of the paper-based catalog," Slone says.
In order to expand on that idea, FML customized FrameViewer, using the FDK FMfit feature, so the interface will fill up the entire monitor, no matter what size the user's screen is. FrameMaker Features Save Production Time HLI credits several features of FrameMaker with its ability to easily update the CD-ROM. "FrameMaker is the best publishing tool for long documents because of its support for tables of contents, indexes, headers and footers, book features, and hyperlinks," says Slone. The publishing team inserted index markers upon creation of the documents, and FML was able to generate an index with more than 100,000 hyperlinks in a matter of minutes. "If we had to manually add the hyperlinks to each document from the index, indexing would have required more than 275 hours - or close to two months - of full-time work." Custom Prices by Password Parallel Catalog Publishing for CD-ROM, Web, and paper In the future, Hubbell Lighting plans to publish portions of its catalog on the Web, using Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) or Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). "That's the power of FrameMaker: You can use various inputs, such as database, word-processed files, CAD drawings, and video; and produce various outputs, such as CD-ROM, paper, the Web, and SGML without reauthoring the content," says Folden. CD-ROM Publishing Cuts Costs "LightGear is a strategic positioning tool with unlimited potential," says Folden. "Its ability to generate customized proposals and presentations has played a key role in obtaining sizable orders." For example, when a major automotive manufacturer required an electronic submittal for its new manufacturing facility in Alabama, the local Hubbell Lighting representative was able to create the complete package electronically by cutting and pasting from the CD-ROM. He was the only vendor able to comply with those standards. "The people who designed FrameMaker have done an absolutely brilliant job," says Slone. "Not only is the application fast; it is extensible. The FrameMaker engine is very powerful and allows you to go beyond the page paradigm."Solaris 4.5
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