Pinkham, Jim wrote: > Hmm...might I detect a note of teasing here? Or perhaps it's mild > aggravation at an imprecise question. Either way, yes, it's a vague > question, so I'll defer an exhaustive answer for the moment. > > I've been using FM 9, as part of TCS 2, for about two weeks. I've run > into a few ultimately minor bugs and annoyances; good, prompt help from > Adobe; plug-ins carrying over quite well; good FM integration with the > rest of the suite; and an interface that I find more efficient and > productive than FM 7p1. We haven't made any corporate decisions yet, but > at this point, I like the new version a lot and don't want to go back. >
Just curious about your take on the GUI, Jim -- do you use your mouse predominantly, or do you rely on keyboard shortcuts to get around? I'm a keyboard guy, and try to use the mouse as little as possible. I've been using FM9/TCS2 for a little over a week on a very small book project, and find the interface clumsy and continually intruding on my document space. For example, Special > Variable brings up the Variables 'pod' or whatever they call it, and I can insert a variable easily enough, but when I want the bottom third of my screen back, I have to grab the mouse to right-click and dismiss the pod. Same with the Designers -- they pop up fine on my keyboard commands, but seem to require a mouse click to dismiss. Same with book window. I have also found a bug, in that text frames within anchored frames become unselectable by mouse under certain conditions. (Haven't exactly figured out what those are, but seems to have to do with whether frames have overlapped each other.) I cannot select the text or its frame with the mouse, only with Esc (o)bject (n)ext repeatedly, and even then, the selected frame is unresponsive to the mouse -- can't move it except with Alt+arrows. (Moving objects around in a graphic is one place I *do* like to use the mouse ;-) And then when I generate a PDF from the book, all my Heading1TOC pgfs are showing up as PDF bookmarks -- even though FM9 no longer lists them as possibilities in the Bookmarks tab of PDF setup. So there's no way to tell FM *not* to put them in; I have to delete them manually in Acrobat. (Which has also been refusing to print anything, claiming that "There were no pages selected to print" after a print-all-pages command.) So.... I'm not such a happy camper with TCS 2. -- Stuart Rogers Technical Communicator Phoenix Geophysics Limited Toronto, ON, Canada +1 (416) 491-7340 x 325 srogers phoenix-geophysics com "Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product." -- Eleanor Roosevelt
