I'm going to disagree only with the keyboard shortcuts comment -- they
sort of fixed it is the most generous comment I can make. If you were a
dedicated keyboardist, the "new" keyboard shortcut is slower than --
well molasses in January. On first starting Frame you wait the first
time on the "blinking" menu to first appear -- several seconds. On
subsequent use of the keyboard shortcut, it's hit or miss. It appears
that the longer your paragraph format list is, the slower it is because
I don't have trouble with the Character catalog. And many times, in the
paragraph formatting, Frame flat doesn't recognize the first letter of
the format. It will stop on a totally different letter forcing you to
mouse the selection as subsequent taps of the desired letter combination
does not bring up the correct format desired.
For years I have carefully crafted my templates to take advantage of
those keyboard shortcuts. The loss was devastating. During the time that
they were missing entirely, someone on this list mentioned alternative
keyboard shortcuts which I have forgotten as I always used F8 and F9
with the alphabet letter. I'm wondering if that alternate route still
works.
Regards,
Linda Pelton
On 3/30/2014 11:27 AM, Scott Prentice wrote:
Aw .. c'mon .. that's a bit harsh, don't you think?
I'm not a fan of the "new" (since FM9) UI either, but personally
attacking the people behind the current product really isn't fair. The
current team developing FrameMaker *is* very interested in customer
feedback, and does listen. (And it's certainly not the programmers'
faults .. they implement the features they are told to.)
The new UI is a significant change from the old standard, but can be
tamed if you're willing to spend the time to learn how to make it do
what you want. There are training videos and other info about setting
up workspaces and other features, and with FM12, they have fixed most
of the missing keyboard shortcuts (I believe). I totally agree that
there are some frustrating aspects to it, but that's the new world of
UI design. If you don't like it, stick with FM8. No one is forcing you
to upgrade (although they do encourage it).
As for XML editors .. I think you'll find that XMetaL is considerably
lacking when compared to FM. Especially if you're planning on
generating PDFs .. you'll either need to take a step back on your
formatting and layout, or you'll still need to use FM for PDF
publishing. (But I am biased .. I'll admit that freely.)
Cheers,
...scott
On 3/29/14 4:08 PM, Zimmerman, Gary wrote:
**
I swear it's like the Adobe FrameMaker developers do absolutely NO
usability testing, get absolutely NO feedback from existing
customers, focus groups, or anything else before they foist on us a
crappy, untested GUI that their offshore developers implemented in
some kind of cultural vacuum.(Not offshore culture so much as
programmer culture - before any programmers get offended, there are
plenty of exceptional programmers who have a GREAT sense of usability
and customer needs - apparently Adobe hasn't hired any for the FM
team, nor any usability/human factors consultants.)
The programming underneath may be great (I doubt it, with the general
fragility of the thing for many releases now), but the usability if
off-the-charts bad.Like something designed by a bunch of college
programmers who have no concept of building a usable product, but
instead think "more is better" so they toss in everything figuring
that they'll have something for everyone, and end up with such a hash
salad that you spend more time jumping through GUI hoops than you do
productive writing.(Remember what college kids did when word
processors introduce lots of fun fonts to play with - the FM 9 and 10
GUI is pretty much the GUI equivalent of "ransom letter" tech writing.)
I can remember when FM was unquestionably a better choice than Word
for any serious documentation work.Now they're approaching parity.I
don't know about FM8, but when we jumped from 7 to 9, it was all
downhill after that.We're on 10 now, debating upgrading.We're also
moving to a DITA CMS and Xmetal editor - much less powerful, but it
does what it needs to do without being an obstacle to the writers.We
didn't even consider using FM as our XML editor, though the
transition might have been less of an issue for our writers who are
used to FM.
Sorry to rant.I LIKE FM.I'm just so sorry they messed with the GUI
and messed up so badly with 9 and onwards.They may fix it to be
decent again incrementally, but like Windows 8, they should have
scrapped the whole thing when they realized what a horrible blunder
they made instead of turning a deaf ear and insisting everything was
great for so long, when real users knew it wasn't so.Credibility
gone.Maybe 11 is better, maybe 12 even better.Don't know if I'll ever
get to try them.
-- garyZ
**
**
*From:*[email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Rick Quatro
*Sent:* Saturday, March 29, 2014 7:50 AM
*To:* 'rebecca officer'; [email protected]
*Subject:* RE: making stuff unconditional in FM12
Hi Rebecca,
I see what you mean and agree that if you want to quickly remove all
conditions from a selection, it is painful. They should put the
Unconditional button back in, or have a modifier key were you could
uncheck everything with one click.
Rick
Rick Quatro
Carmen Publishing Inc.
585-366-4017
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*From:*[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *rebecca
officer
*Sent:* Wednesday, March 26, 2014 11:19 PM
*To:* [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject:* making stuff unconditional in FM12
Hi everyone
I just went looking for the "unconditional" button in the revamped
Conditional Tags pod in FM12. It ain't there.
Am I just being blind? Or is there another one-or-two-click way to
make stuff unconditional?
At the moment, it looks like I either have to go the Copy Special
route, or manually untick all the tick boxes. To add insult to
injury, they go On > As Is > Off, so I have to click each tickbox
*twice* to clear it. Seriously, Adobe??
Cheers
Rebecca
NOTICE: This message contains privileged and confidential
information intended only for the use of the addressee
named above. If you are not the intended recipient of
this message you are hereby notified that you must not
disseminate, copy or take any action in reliance on it.
If you have received this message in error please
notify Allied Telesis Labs Ltd immediately.
Any views expressed in this message are those of the
individual sender, except where the sender has the
authority to issue and specifically states them to
be the views of Allied Telesis Labs.
_______________________________________________
You are currently subscribed to framers [email protected].
Send list messages [email protected].
To unsubscribe send a blank email to
[email protected]
or
visithttp://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/sp10%40leximation.com
Send administrative questions [email protected]. Visit
http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
_______________________________________________
You are currently subscribed to framers as [email protected].
Send list messages to [email protected].
To unsubscribe send a blank email to
[email protected]
or visit
http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/lapelton%40gmail.com
Send administrative questions to [email protected]. Visit
http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
_______________________________________________
You are currently subscribed to framers as [email protected].
Send list messages to [email protected].
To unsubscribe send a blank email to
[email protected]
or visit
http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com
Send administrative questions to [email protected]. Visit
http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
