Footnote placement improvement for practical and aesthetic reasons

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

As well as allowing multiple short footnotes on a line, Adobe could allow 
long footnotes to flow from a right to the left following page.  It could 
also balance footnotes on facing pages.  If a footnote reference is on a 
right page, it should flow back a long footnote onto the facing left page. 
 Where a succession of longish footnotes follow each other, they should be 
placed at the foot of successive pages.

These are all standard publishing practice, yet here we are at v. 7.x and 
they have still not been implemented.  There was a time when FrameMaker 
was being taken up by academics but until a few things are fixed (like 
interfacing to BiblioText, etc) it ain't going to happen.

In fact, press a few more buttons and you can get me ranting about how 
FrameMaker should always work in double spreads -- balancing facing short 
pages would be a good start.

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Job Opening: Long-Term Contract Publications Production

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

I can also walk on water and charge only $780/hour.  As it happens, I have 
used FM since v. 3.0 on Sun OpenLook, Solaris, HP-UX, Macintosh, and 
Windows, wrote UNIX scripts to capture and automatically size screen 
shots, have about 30 FM plug-ins, including IXgen, IndexRef, etc., and 
have used mif2go to generate online help and HTML. But if you imagine that 
I or anyone else with similar skills are slaveys that can be turned on and 
off like a tap, you are making a big mistake.  You truly deserve anybody 
who goes to work for you on the conditions you propose.  Ever consider 
that people might be doing some other work for someone else in the 10-15 
hours per week beyond your 30 hours?  Are they going to drop that and come 
in whenever at your whim?  Get real.
--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007




"Anna Paganelli" 
Sent by: framers-bounces+hedley.finger=myob.com at lists.frameusers.com
15/03/2007 06:53 PM

To: 
cc: Amy Witherow 
Subject:Job Opening: Long-Term Contract Publications 
Production


Long-Term Contract Publications Production Opening
Average 30 hours/week
To start: April 2007 

Job Description:
Need detail oriented, self starter to build and deliver HTML help and
PDF documentation for a software group within Cadence. You'll create
production-ready files from writers' FrameMaker source, and create
WebWorks Help, ASCII Help, and PDF deliverables for releases using
FrameMaker, UNIX scripts, WebWorks Publisher and Automap, and Acrobat. 
As needed, maintain templates and troubleshoot FrameMaker problems for
writers. 
Depending on your skill set, you might also create figures and
illustrations, update scripts, or assist with writing tasks. 
Later, you'll help convert FrameMaker files to XML-DITA (authoring tool
unknown at this time).

Experience Needed:
- 5+ years as a production editor or equivalent job title
- Thorough knowledge of FrameMaker, including knowledge of MIF, and
FrameMaker utilities and add-ons such as IXgen
- Experience with Adobe Acrobat, including Distiller
- Experience maintaining FrameMaker templates
- Experience creating HTML help using WebWorks products
- Experienced on both PC and UNIX environments
- Able to read and modify UNIX shell scripts
Ability to write scripts from scratch is a plus.
Knowledge of XML and/or experience with XML tools is a plus.
Experience with Photoshop is a plus.

Other Requirements:
- Able to handle multiple tasks and changes to processes at the same
time (stress)
- Able to flex a nearly full-time schedule to meet the needs of the
department, and
  take time off when things aren't so busy

Please contact Amy Witherow at amyw at cadence.com for more information.



___


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Hyperlink marker gotcha to be aware of

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

**BUG**
Hypertext markers in generated files with long strings crash FrameMaker 
7.0p578, 7.1p114 , 7.2p158

Steps to reproduce bug:
 1. Create a book with a number of components, including a test-target 
file which is nested deeply in folders so that its relative pathname from 
the *.book file's folder exceeds 143 characters.
 2. Apply a custom condition format to some text in this file.
 3. Generate an index of condition tags with Hypertext markers added to 
entries.
 4. Ensure the test target file is closed.
 5. Open the index of conditions generated file and Ctrl-Alt-click the 
entry pointing to the test target file. FrameMaker crashes.
 6. Choose File > Open and open the test target file.
 7. Repeat Step 5.  FrameMaker crashes.
 Results:
FrameMaker crashes as described above.
 Expected results:
The test-target file should open and display the hightlighted condition 
format. Other Hypertext markers with instruction strings less than 143 
characters do not crash FrameMaker. 
 Comment:
The fact that three versions of FrameMaker crash, and the test-target file 
can be opened in the normal fashion in all three suggests that the file is 
not faulty but that somehow a bug is provoked by an instruction string in 
Hypertext markers that is longer than approx. 143 characters.  One would 
expect that an attempt to create an instruction string longer than 255 
characters would provoke a crash or other unexpected behaviour but the 
string length is well short of this well-known limit.
--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

The living dead: RoboHelp for FrameMaker walks among us!

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

No doubt this link had already been posted on the lists and I'm the last 
to know -- as usual.
--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

looking for a way to automate alignment in tables

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Cybele:

Just create a special para format just for that column.  Then set a 
decimal tab for that para font and, in the Numbering tab of the Paragraph 
Designer, insert a single tab \t as the "number".  Now any figures typed 
into that para format will always align on the decimal tab.

Hedley
--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Structured Frame saving XML

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Trevor:

> Because our XML files are managed by a source control system, ...

... you are using the wrong tool.  Source control systems are meant 
for program source code where line breaks have meaning, usually 
to separate program statements.

You need an XML-aware content management system that understands 
that whitespace (CR, LF, TAB, etc.) must be ignored and that 
the position of attributes in element tags does not matter.

So don't blame FrameMaker.  All XML editors are "deficient" in this 
regard if you examine their "source code".  But then they all 
obey the rules, so this doesn't matter.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Structured Frame saving XML

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

As well as the other suggestions re read/write rules, perhaps you could 
turn Smart Spaces off.
--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Character format enhancement, Was: Find / Replace special

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

> In addition to As Is and setting a hard value, I'd like to be able to 
> set a relative value, such as a character format that applies a 
> specific font and makes it 1 point smaller than the paragraph font.

When mixing fonts it is considered good form by typographers to make their 
x-heights equal.
May I second Pat's suggestion of increasing/decreasing point size relative 
to the host paras 
font size but also suggest:

@   automatically setting x-heights of the embedded char format equal 
to the host para format 
@   increasing/decreasing char format size by a fixed percentage 
relative to the host size

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Third-party or "out of the box" plugins [was "re: Frame's future"]

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Marcus, Marcus, Marcus:

> > I attempted to make the point that a study of the third-party plugins
> > would indicate to Adobe the gaps in FrameMaker's functionality that
> > they need to address, and chose indexing plugins as an example where
> > there are many independent plugins to improve this functionality.
> 
> While I agree that plugin usage indicates shortfalls in the current 
> product, I don't accept that Adobe should take direction from that. Most 

> of the plugins mentioned have been developed to support hardcopy 
> publishing, but Adobe know as well as anyone that that market is in 
> chronic decline.

I'm surprised that you of all people should associate functionality with 
presentation.  It's a bit similar to 
separating format from content.   8^)  And I'm surprised that you equate 
indexes only with hardcopy.

I was trying to make the point that when there are a bunch of plugins to 
support indexing (= data entry), 
Adobe should get the message -- that the indexing functionality in 
FrameMaker sucks.  It was NOT a 
plea to reproduce third-party plugins as is, just their functionality -- 
do we really want the slick user 
interface of IXgen (sorry, Frank)?

Whether that index finishes up in a hardcopy book, PDF, help file, or web 
site is immaterial.  Getting index 
entries into FrameMaker is more difficult than it need be.  And hardcopy 
isn't dead.  If you and I are like 
other people, how many times do we print out a help topic or web page to 
read it? 

And in the wonderful world of personalised content that adapts to the 
custom product you have ordered, 
the country you are in, the access privileges you have, and the set of 
topics you have chosen to print, 
wouldn't it be wonderful if you have chosen to print out your own 
personalised workshop manual for your 
custom 2009 Turbo Tarburner with optional hydrogen fuel cell and electric 
motor (as against the standard 
biodiesel motor), racing slicks, two-tone duco and hard-top convertible 
four-door.  And of course this 
personalised manual would come with its own custom index. When your head 
is under the bonnet, 
Google doesn't work too well with your Haynes repair manual..

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Third-party or "out of the box" plugins [was "re: Frame's future"]

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Marcus^3:

The example of the Turbo Tarburner was chosen with care.  Even as we 
bicker, a major automotive manufacturer is implementing an on-demand 
customised workshop manual.

The mechanic will simply enter the car's body number or VIN or whatever, 
and a custom manual for just the equipment in that build will be created 
on the fly and presented on screen.

The mechanic will be able to use a TOC, Index, or boolean search engine to 
find the instructions they need.  The index is there for people who, 
unlike us, do NOT work in the IT industry and have a more sophisticated 
approach to information retrieval.  But EVERYBODY knows how to use a 
back-of-the-book index -- even if it is on-line!

And they will probably print out just the pages they need to fix the warp 
drive.

Regards,
Hedley 

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Third-party or "out of the box" plugins [was "re: Frame's future"]

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Since my post about plugins diverted this thread from its original topic 
onto a discussion of the merits of plugins, may I amplify my remarks?

The original discussion was, generally, about what Adobe needed to do to 
find out what functionality their customers would need in the future.

I attempted to make the point that a study of the third-party plugins 
would indicate to Adobe the gaps in FrameMaker's functionality that they 
need to address, and chose indexing plugins as an example where there are 
many independent plugins to improve this functionality.  Indexing is 
surely a fundamental function of a publishing application, not bloatware 
as one correspondent implied.  I am not a professional indexer, but any 
user of Sky Index, Cindex, Authex, or Macrex will tell you how *fast* 
these tools are -- progressive matching against previous entries to speed 
up entry, real-time display of the compiled index, editing entries in the 
real-time display (e.g. "dogs/feeding", "dogs/breeds", "dogs/shows" can be 
quickly changed to "canines/feeding", "canines/breeds", "canines/shows" by 
changing the main entry "dogs" in one place), fast construction of sort 
order, application of char formats, view of entries in page order showing 
what entries are on what page, etc.**

These many plugins are surely a pointer to a need to improve the indexing 
functionality "out of the box", either by Adobe developing this 
functionality to a level comparable to the standalone tools or by 
licensing in suitable third-party plugins.

While there are many ingenious plugins available that various people have 
developed to scratch an itch shared by only a few, FrameMaker customers 
should not have to hunt for third-party tools that address *fundamental* 
functionality.  I am sure that Frank Elmore would be happy to license 
FrameScript/ElmScript if Adobe were willing to pay an appropriate fee, for 
instance.

Regards,
Hedley


** Amazingly, none of these "smart" tools embed the entries in the source 
file as Word and FrameMaker do.  If the pagination changes there are some 
crude methods of reassigning page numbers but if, say, the pagination is 
radically different in a new edition (think of the various paperback, 
hardcover and coffee-table edition of Dava Sobel's "Longitude") the index 
has to be manually recompiled! Truly!

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Frame's future

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Another thing Adobe could do is look at all the plug-ins and mods that 
various people have come up with to scratch an itch -- or stem a raging 
haemorrhage.  For example, there are a whole bunch of indexing tools -- 
IXgen, emDex, Index Tools Pro, IndexRef, etc. -- suggesting that there is 
a crying need for a decent indexing interface on  a par with Cindex or Sky 
Index.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

First Hurdle

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

> Regarding FrameMaker content, I don't know myself of any special 
> issues regarding structure. The general rule with conditional 
> text is to keep things simple, else it can turn into a 
> maintenance nightmare.

I would avoid using FrameMaker conditional formats in structured 
documents.  Struct FM's "solution" for roundtripping is to insert 
processing instructions in the XML output so that it can reconstruct the 
conditional formats when the XML file is reopened. 
Unfortunately, the PIs are virtually impossible for any other XML 
application to process.  The PI solution does not handle overlapped 
conditions very well.  Suppose condition B not only overlaps condition A 
but also extends beyond condition A:

AA
 xx xx xxx xx 

   BB

In the XML output you would expect

 xx xx xxx xx 

but you actually get

 xx xx xxx xx 

Note that the B condition starts inside A but ends outside A, that is, B 
is not properly nested in A.  Add a few more conditions and you quickly 
reach a situation that is absolutely impossible to unravel with, say, XSLT 
conversions.

The kosher way to do the above is to have conditional attributes on 
elements.  The above might be rendered as 

 xx xx 
xxx xx 

Adobe should really clean up the PI nesting so that the "correct" XML way 
could be derived from them.

Otherwise, you should look at Advantica Sourcerer or West Street ABCM (= A 
Better Condition Manager? H), which both apply conditional attributes 
the proper XML way.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Asking a favor

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

> an acronym he/she would also write what it
> stands for in parentheses at least once

The approved nomenclature for "acronym" is TLA or YAA -- 
Three-Letter Acronym or Yet Another Acronym.  8^)

Hope this amuses, if not helps.

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

FrameMaker 5.5.6 > Word > InDesign help needed

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

A former client of mine has a thesis with many graphics imported by 
reference into FrameMaker 5.5.6 running in Classic Mac 9.1 on 
PowerMacintosh.  She wants to convert them to InDesign v. 2.0.  I 
suggested that she save to Mac Word 4, 5, or 6, or to RTF using the 
Japanese converter, in the Save As dialogue.  I can't do this myself as I 
don't have FrameMaker installed on my home Windows computer.

So, will this process work: FrameMaker 5.5.6 > Word/RTF > InDesign?  (I 
don't have InDesign or any InDesign experience.)

If this does work, can an Australian FrameMaker user who can assist in 
this conversion please contact Mary Ann directly at 
 or by calling mobile 0425 794 949 (+61 425 
794 949).

Thanks,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

FM 7.1 Compatibility

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Will:

> he had
> some OLE issues but that is not surprising.

You don't need OLE.  Import graphics by reference.  If you double-click on 
them, they will open in the associated graphics program.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Highlighting in M

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Diane and awl: 

> With Acrobat Pro 7.0 or 8.0, you
> can save the PDF for review and the writers in Japan will have similar
> tools to the Word doc with highlighting, notes and editing.

Actually, the new *free* Adobe Reader v. 8.0 will do all this stuff and 
even, I believe, allow a group of geographically dispersed writers to walk 
through a PDF together, adding notes, highlighting, and edits that all can 
see simultaneously.  Perhaps it's a flying pig, but download now and check 
it out.

Regards,
Hedley

'Unemployed at last.'  -- First sentence in "Such is life", by Joseph 
Furhpy, writing as 'Tom Collins'.

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Ipsum Lorem?

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

You can install a Lorem Ipsum generator in Firefox called Dummy Lipsum.
--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Grouping Definitions

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

As well as grouping para and char tags alphabetically by beginning their 
names with their general class and adding a specific suffix (e.g. 
"HeadingChapter", "HeadingSection", etc.) may I suggest that you prefix 
them with short codes to quickly apply them from the keyboard.

Thus "HeadingChapter" might become "hc_HeadingChapter", "HeadingSection" 
might become "hs_HeadingSection", etc. to be readily applied by typing 
Ctrl-9, typing 'hc' or whatever, then pressing Enter.  Char formats can be 
named similarly.  So can variables (insert with Ctrl-0) and conditional 
formats (Ctrl-4 apply, Ctrl-5 remove specific format (handy when several 
formats are overlapped).  I would not create some char formats by meaning, 
particularly emphasis, unless you use the same formats for different 
languages where different conventions apply.  Are you really going to 
create an essentially italic format for 'Emphasis', 'ShipNames', 
'BookTitles', 'OperaTitles', etc. and all the other usages where italic is 
applied by convention.  Probably not.

Try naming cross-references by a name that reflects their purpose and 
appearance in the text, e.g. 'Chapter_99,_"Title",_on_page_99', 
'Step_9_in_"Heading"_on_page_99', etc. as you can't specify xrefs from the 
keyboard.

Why all the underscores?  Some third-party tools don't like spaces in 
format names or require awkward workarounds to handle them.  So plan for 
the future and don't use spaces in format names.  Ever.

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Some Pointers for IXgen

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

John:

I suggest you stay right away from using a list of keywords generated from 
one book to automatically add index markers to another book for a few 
reasons.

First, you will find when you apply the list of keywords to the second 
book that there will be many false hits which you will have to remove/edit 
tediously by hand.

Second, by convention, entries in indexes should conform to the universal 
convention of plural forms for nouns, and the gerund (or present 
continuous tense) for verbs, thus --- 

cats
caring for
feeding of
etc.

In the second and subsequent books, target words are likely to be in 
various forms so words which should be hits will be overlooked.

Third, good index entries are typically fragments containing several words 
(e.g. "configuring modems"), so attempting to apply fragments to a book 
will again miss many valid hits.

There is a long history of unsuccessful attempts to automate indexing 
(look up KWOC and KWIC for early examples) and IXgen is no exception. The 
only successful attempt is Google.  8^)   An index compiled by a human 
indexer will always be of superior quality.

May I suggest an alternative strategy?  User guides and other 
user-oriented publications typically differ from other kinds of books by 
fairly short blocks of text or instructions ("topics") and large numbers 
of headings, usually nested deeply.   And each heading is usually a good 
description of the contents of its topic.  Therefore, an index based on 
only these headings should produce a high-quality index as there should be 
little need to create index entries for phrases and concepts within the 
topics.

1   Consider creating a special book containing all the component 
files from the other books.
2   Then use IXgen's ability to attach markers to the heading 
paragraph formats, embedding the text of the heading within the marker.
3   Generate the list of markers.
4   Edit each entry in the list of markers using the standard syntax 
for marker text.
5   Update the markers in the book by writing them back, making sure 
to split markers containing multiple entries into separate markers.
6   Read the markers back into a new list of markers sorted 
alphabetically.
7   Edit the markers for consistency and to combine clones, etc. as 
you would normally.
8   Generate individual indexes for each of the three separate books.
9   Read through each book and add extra index entries for concepts, 
etc. within topics that really are important enough to be indexed.  The 
master index already generated will ensure that these final entries are 
consistent.

This should produce consistent indexes in all your books for far less 
effort than applying a list of keywords and editing the subsequent list of 
hundreds of (mostly) false hits.

Regards,
Hedley 

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Some Pointers for IXgen (AMENDMENT)

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Second thought:

8   Generate individual indexes for each of the three separate books.
9   Read through each book and add extra index entries for concepts, 
etc. within topics that really are important enough to be indexed.  The 
master index already generated will ensure that these final entries are 
consistent.

Reverse the order of these two steps.  Read through the books then add the 
supplementary entries to the master index book.  Generate the master index 
and edit all the entries to make sure the supplementary entries conform. 
Then generate the individual indexes.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2007

Difference between us and international english Framemaker

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Gillian:

> They write their manuals the English way* (i.e. colour, theatre etc.) 
> and we write the American way** (color, theater). In 2007, I will be 
> working on a project with them so the docset will be split up between 
> their local tech writer and me. 
> So the question is, which English do we standardize on? 

Both.  Use conditions.

Regards,
Hedley

* A.k.a. the right way.
** A.k.a. the wrong way.

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Fw: third party vendors

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Can someone tell me to what thread Karsten was replying?  It certainly 
wan't "Third party vendors"!

-- Hedley

Hello Michael,

you can do this with a recursive function or sub.

Set StartDir = 'c:\programme\';
Run RecDir pv_strDir(StartDir);

Sub RecDir Using pv_strDir
 Local lv_strStartDir;
 Local lv_objFileInfo;
 Local lv_blnRetStat;
 Local lv_strPathName;
 Local lv_intRetPos;
 Local lv_strExtension;
 Local lv_lv_strRetStr;

 Set lv_strStartDir = pv_strDir;
 New EFileInfo NewVar(vFileInfo) Filename(lv_strStartDir + 
'\*.*');
 Set lv_objFileInfo = vFileInfo;
 Loop While(lv_objFileInfo.FilePresent)
 If lv_objFileInfo.IsDirectory = false

 // code for found files

 Else
 Find String('\.')
 InString 
(lv_objFileInfo.FilePath)
 ReturnPos(lv_intRetPos)
 ReturnStatus(lv_blnRetStat)
 ReturnString(lv_strRetStr);
 If lv_blnRetStat = false
 Find 
String('\..')
  InString (lv_objFileInfo.FilePath)
  ReturnPos(lv_intRetPos)
  ReturnStatus(lv_blnRetStat)
  ReturnString(lv_strRetStr);
 if 
lv_blnRetStat = false
  // code for found folders

  //start search in folder (recursive)
  Run RecDir
pv_strDir(lv_objFileInfo.FilePath);
 EndIf
 EndIf
 EndIf
 Run lv_objFileInfo.GetNext;
 EndLoop
 DELETE Object(lv_objFileInfo);
EndSub

See the full sourcecode on
http://framescript.natebus.de/index.php?navi=script_misc .

Best regards Karsten 'MAC' Natebus 

-Original Message-
From: framers-bounces+karsten=natebus...@lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+karsten=natebus.de at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf
Of Ann Zdunczyk
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 10:23 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com; framers at omsys.com
Subject: OT: third party vendors

All, 

In the process of putting together a tools and pricing plan for the VP of
Product Engineering. I am trying to find third party vendors that are
resellers of Adobe Framemaker and Adobe's own list for this information is
woefully out-of-date. Specifically, I am hoping to find vendors that still
offer the TPL version of licensing ("x" number of licenses for this 
reduced
rate plus a guarantee of point releases and one major upgrade), but any 
and
all suggestions are appreciated. I am in the Denver metro area.

TIA, 

TVB 

Tammy L. Van Boening
Engineering Technical Writer
Fiserv Insurance Solutions
Property and Casualty Division
303-729-7733
tammy.vanboening at fiserv.com 


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Any way of applying a custom master page to final even page in component file

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

Occasionally a chapter file ends on a right page (odd-numbered). Because 
the pagination is set to even number of pages, the default Left master is 
applied to the final left page (even-numbered) of the chapter.  We would 
like to apply a special master page devoid of running heads and feet, 
except for the page number.

Is there any inbuilt capabilty in FrameMaker for automatically applying or 
removing this final custom page depending on whether the page count is odd 
or even?  I looked at the MasterPageMap table approach but this only 
triggers on a paragraph format.  By definition, the flow symbol will be on 
the immediately preceding right page, so there would be NO paragraph on 
the last even page to trigger on.

Is there some way to do this automagically?  Or do I have to write a 
FrameScript event routine to check all component files in a book and 
apply/remove the last custom page on Update Book or whatever.  I suppose 
writers COULD ensure that a special para appeared on the last even page 
but then that's one more manual job to do before generating a PDF which 
they don't need.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Where is ?

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Firefox (where do they get these names?) and Internet Explorer v. 7 are 
just showing a blank page for , not even the 
"Site under reconstruction" message.  What gives?  Or have I been 
transported to an alternative universe where it no longer exists?
--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Acrobatlateral thinking : Implement simultaneous multiple releases [was "RE: Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.0"]

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Dov and all:

> This is a good time, though, to
> repeat my warning that you should not attempt to have
> either multiple versions of Acrobat, multiple versions
> of Reader, and/or mixtures of Acrobat and Reader installed
> on a given system. Although it is possible to coerce the
> installers to do that, it is neither endorsed nor
> supported by Adobe. Many, many problems that we hear
> about with regards to anything PDF ultimately get traced
> to attempts to have anything more than one version of
> Acrobat or of Reader installed on one system. In some
> cases problems occur as the result of not fully uninstalling
> previous versions or following the explicit directions of
> the uninstaller to reboot as part of the uninstall procedure.

Dov repeats the by now familiar warning about installing and 
using multiple releases of Acrobat.  This has been going on for 
a long time now, so evidently a good number of people have 
good reasons for wanting to retain multiple versions of Acrobat.

Instead of making this the customer's problem (maintaining two 
different releases on different computers and other workarounds)
why not fix it?  If Adobe is in the business of satisfying customer needs, 

it appears that a significant number of customers want this to be 
implemented.

And don't anybody say it can't be done.  We need to go no further than 
our old mate FrameMaker.  I have FrameMaker v. 7.0, 7.1 and 7.2 installed 
on my computer and they all co-exist quite happily.  They are there so I 
can 
troubleshoot problems that my colleagues may be having with the particular 

version of FM on their computers.  So, not only can I run all three 
versions 
simultaneously, but when I impatiently double-click the destop icon too 
enthusiastically, I can have multiple launches of the ONE release 
running.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Acrobatlateral thinking : Implement simultaneous multiple releases [was "RE: Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.0"]

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Tina:

> I would think it would be very difficult to get multiple
> version working together that do not interfere with each other.

Difficult, but not impossible.  Software manufacturers should not blame 
their customers and put problems on their shoulders that can easily (or 
difficultly) be solved by the manufacturer.  And "difficult" is relative: 
when 
you have a near-monopoly of the graphics arts market and are earning 
hundreds of millions of dollars, "difficult" is both easy and cheap.

For a start, when I double-click on 
an FM file, FM 7.2 always opens.  So there is no reason why Acrobat 
versions cannot do the same -- the last installed has all the registry 
pointers directed to this version.  As for toobars and plug-ins, they 
could all be installed by the latest installation.

If you wanted to use an older version with a file you would have to launch 

it and use File > Open, just as I do with FrameMaker 7.0.

Regards,
Hedleyu

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Cond Text in a text inset

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Shmuel:

> Is there any problem using conditional text inside of a text inset?

If the host file does not have that condition, the visibility of the 
condition in the text inset will be the same in the host file.  If the 
host file does have the condition too, then the visibility, definition of 
condition indicators, and whether condition indicators are on or off will 
override those in the text inset, whatever their state in the text inset. 
That is, provided you have allowed the host formats to override those in 
the text inset when you import it.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Can User Variable value be changed at book level?

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Rick, David, Radha:

> Radha Padmanabhan wrote: 
> 
> >   I have got a FM book with about 50 chapters (files). But 
> > they are logically grouped as 5 guides. All chapters in all 
> > guides have footers with Product Name, Release No. and Date 
> > and Guide identification. For each guide, the footer has a 
> > User Variable-DocumentNumebr. Its value is partially 
> > different for each guide. Every time there is a release, the 
> > variable value changes. I am having to edit the master page 
> > of each of 50 chapters manually. 
> > 
> >   Is there a possibility to change the value of the variable 
> > from book level for a range of chapters?

Aren't we forgetting the <$volnum> numbering builder?  It works just like 
<$chapnum> and can be used everywhere that numbering builder can be used. 
Just insert a user variable containing <$volnum>, then select all the book 
components that belong to a single guide and set <$volnum> to a fixed 
value for all the selected components in the group.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Document Management System needed for FM

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Re the discussion of CVS, have a look at Subversion and TortoiseSVN as a 
GUI client.  Both on Sourceforge.

Also, Siberlogic Sibersafe is a *** content management system *** that 
works with FrameMaker content down to the level of paragraphs and also 
supports the DITA XML system.

Note: A document management system tends to deal with complete 
documents/files/PDFs or whatever, while a content management system deals 
with fragments of content at any suitable granularity.
--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

How to download Adobe updates

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

When I launch FM on Windows XP, an alert informs me that FM is checking 
for updates, but then an error message states that a file could not be 
downloaded.  This is probably because of IT admin's firewall policies. Are 
there alternative ways of getting these updates?
--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

how to enlarge conditional text window

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

> P.S.  Hacking the dialogues is so easy (at least up to FM 7.1) that you 
> wonder why Adobe hasn't assigned the work-experience programmer to do it 

> for ALL those annoyingly tiny dialogues.

It would be only two to three days' work.  Then Adobe could release it as 
FM 8.  [Sorry, couldn't help myself.]

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Going nutso' with a "phantom" cross-reference

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Fred, Tammy:

> Checking for unresolved x-refs with all conditions showing
> establishes that all the x-refs are good, and you should then be
> able to document that the "bad" ones that are reported in the Book
> Errors windows when you publish any given conditionalized version
> are due only to hidden x-refs.

I would recommend adding an unresolved cross-references index to the end 
of your book.  This reliably reports cross-references that point to hidden 
or non-existent targets and does not consider cross-references that are 
themselves hidden by a condition.  Then you would not have to change your 
SQA (whatever that is -- I came in late).

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Odd console message on boot-up

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

When I boot up FrameMaker 7.2b144, the console window opens and displays 
these puzzling messages:

> FrameMaker: entry for client QuarkXPress Document (3.3-4.1x) is missing 
fields (4 required)
> FrameMaker: entry for client Pagemaker 7.0.x Document is missing fields 
(4 required)
> FrameMaker: entry for client Pagemaker 6.5.x Document is missing fields 
(4 required)
> FrameMaker: entry for client Pagemaker 7.0.x Template is missing fields 
(4 required)
> FrameMaker: entry for client Pagemaker 6.5.x Template is missing fields 
(4 required)

I am opening FM directly from the Windows Start menu, not double-clicking 
an FM document.

So what do these messages mean?  Is FM trying to launch PM and Xpress 
filter plug-ins which are faulty or missing?

Puzzled,
Burwood East

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

I want a numbered list with alphabetized substeps

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Karyn:

> Numbered list 

FM Adobe DITA Plugin

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

In the framemaker-dita Yahoo! group, Carla Martinek has just advised ...

> Just got out of the "Benefits of Structured Authoring and Migrating
> In Preparation For XML" webinar a little bit ago.
> 
> One phrase I heard at the beginning of it was along the lines of
> "the DITA plugin should be available in the next week or so."
> 
> Note that on July 11, there is another Adobe webinar titled
> "FrameMaker and DITA" so I imagine it will be out on or before that
> date.  The plugin was installed on the version of 7.2 they were
> using in this webinar.


Home / Company / Events / 
Event Details
Adobe FrameMaker 7.2 live eSeminar Series
July 11, 2006 | Web Application Developer 
Registration
Hello, logInName [ Sign Out ]
you are currently registered to attend:
FrameMaker and DITA ?
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM US/Eastern
Cancel Registration 

Who Should Attend?
FrameMaker unstructured users looking for new functionality to streamline 
your existing workflow
Users taking advantage of the structured environment in FrameMaker and 
want to know what can be done with new support for XSLT and Schemas
MS Word users looking to migrate to a fully structured XML environment
Online eSeminars
In these free online seminars, RJ Jacquez, Senior FrameMaker Technical 
Evangelist will discuss current technical authoring and publishing trends 
that are shaping the technical documentation marketplace and the future 
direction of FrameMaker.
Have You Looked At FrameMaker Lately? [VIEW THIS PREVIOUS SEMINAR 
ACCESSIBLE FROM ADOBE'S SITE]
In this eSeminar, we will look at the wealth of functionality recently 
added to FrameMaker and the trends that are shaping the future of the 
product. You will learn about improving your workflow with several of 
FrameMaker's powerful new features:
Multiple Undo using the History palette
Mapping paragraph styles to custom master pages
XML and DITA enhancements
Improved support for migration to XML structured authoring
Tagged PDF file generation for better document accessibility
Benefits of Structured Authoring and Migrating In Preparation For XML 
[VIEW THIS PREVIOUS SEMINAR]
In this eSeminar, we will outline the benefits of using Structured 
FrameMaker and guide you through the process of migrating unstructured 
documents from MS Word and unstructured FrameMaker to fully structured and 
XML-ready documentation. You will learn about:
Components of a structured authoring environment
Getting started with Structured FrameMaker and templates available
Migrating documents using conversion tables 
What else is needed for XML publishing
FrameMaker and DITA [11 July 2006]
In this eSeminar, you will learn the pros and cons of adopting DITA as an 
end-to-end solution for authoring, producing and delivering technical 
information at a topic level. You will also learn how FrameMaker embraces 
the DITA architecture in a writer-friendly, WYSIWG environment. You will 
also learn about:
The misconceptions of DITA. What it is and isn't
How do you get started with DITA and planning the move to DITA
Provide resources and templates to help you get started
How Adobe Systems is using DITA internally
A Chance to Win a Wi-Fi enabled Kodak EasyShare - One Digital Camera
Register today for a chance to win a Wi-Fi enabled Kodak EasyShare-One 
Digital Camera. One winner will be selected at the end of the eSeminar 
series. Terms and Conditions 
What Do You Need to Participate? 
Online live seminars are scheduled events simulcast over the web via 
Macromedia Breeze by Adobe. You'll need a computer with a browser, 
Macromedia Flash player and Internet connection. Voice-Over IP will 
broadcast over your computer if you have audio. Alternatively, audio is 
available via telephone. Access details will be prvicided once you 
register.
Time Zone Conversion 
Not located in US/Eastern time zone? See what time it is in your local 
time zone.
Questions 
For eSeminar and registration questions, please e-mail 
seminars-mm at adobe.com. 
Seats are limited and eSeminars are scheduled to change without advanced 
notice.



If you want to attend this webinar, you first have to register with Adobe 
at  
[click on "Your Account" at the top of the home page].

Once you have registered, click COMMUNITIES in the "menu bar". 

In the "Adobe Communities" page, find the "Related Links" box, and click 
"Events and seminars". 

In the "events and seminars" page, find the "Adobe seminars" column, then 
the "eSeminars" item and click "List all" under that heading. 

In the "eSeminar" page, scroll down and find the "Adobe FrameMaker 7.2 
live eSeminar Series" link and click it. 

In the "Event Details" page 
 
you can now register for the "FrameMaker and DITA" webinar at 12:00 hours 
USA DST (New York) on11 July 2006 in the "Adobe FrameMaker 7.2 live 
eSeminar Series". 

Phew!

Home / Company / Events / 

Methodology for Source Code Control

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

> When you store binary files (like FM files), most source control systems
> can't compare/diff those, so they have to store a complete new copy of
> the file each time it changes. That's why a lot of source control system
> admins don't want you checking in your docs -- you eat up massive
> amounts of disk space, compared to the programmers' source code (text)
> files. 

Visual SourceSafe and Subversion both store use binary deltas.  Subversion 
uses 
binary diffing for all files, both program text and binary files, such as 
graphics, etc.

So repeatedly saving versions does not cause the size of the repository to 
balloon.

Actually, Subversion would we worth looking at as an FM version control 
system.

Regards,
Hedley
--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Opening all text insets in all components in a book ... phew!

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

> Hedley Finger wrote: 
> 
> > Problem:  while you can Open All Files in a book, there 
> > appears to be no global way of opening all the text insets in 
> > all the components of a book. 

Thanks to all who contributed to this one.  Replies and clarifications in 
no particular order: (1)  The text inset source files are one topic per 
file so topics can be reused in any order.  (2)  I have used the separate 
book file containing text inset files before but this time there are a lot 
of text insets --  but this is the likely way to go.  (3)  Looks like a 
FrameScript that scans a book, detects all text insets, and creates a new 
book of text insets could be the way to go.  Now to find the time.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

"File type has changed" (???) when Open Source text inset

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

Following up my previous query re opening all lebenty zillion text inset 
source files in a book, here is another to tax your brains.

I have added an unresolved text inset report to my book and am hunting 
down each text inset to resolve it.  However, most of these text inset 
source files are in their correct folders and the paths from the shell or 
host files to the source files are correct as revealed in Text Inset 
Properties dialogue.  When I click Open Source, I get a message like "File 
type has changed".  What does this mean?  They source files are, after 
all, ordinary old FM files!

A tiny clue lead me down a dead end -- I opened the shell or host files in 
FM 7.2 but the text insets were last saved in FM 7.0.  FM 7.0, 7.1, and 
7.2 are all installed on my computer so I was able to carry out some test 
with host and text inset source files saved with different versions of FM 
-- result: no "File type changed".

Anybody got a handle on this one?

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Opening all text insets in all components in a book ... phew!

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

Some time before IBM released DITA to a puzzled and unsuspecting world, a 
colleague of mine solved the problem of repurposing/reusing small 
fragments of content using text insets.  Basically, the components of a 
book consist of shell files that contain nothing but text insets.  This 
scheme allows relevant text insets to be included in many different 
training manuals, depending on the target readership and course 
requirements.

Problem:  while you can Open All Files in a book, there appears to be no 
global way of opening all the text insets in all the components of a book. 
 Please tell me there is some secret keyboard shortcut or undocumented 
feature that can do this.  Please tell me we do not have to resort to 
FrameScript.  Please tell me there is an alternative to searching for 
every text inset in a book and clicking Open Source as each is 
highlighted.  Please tell me Adobe are working on this right now for the 
mythical (?) v 8.0.

You can imagine the benefits for spell-checking, etc. globally over the 
entire content of a publication, and other global tasks, e.g. fixing 
cross-references, etc.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Technical Writing Suite From Adobe

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Bill:

> sell into the Academic publishing market

And into the commercial publishing non-fiction market!  Then publishers 
can stop using dumb Cindex and Sky Index to produce indexes that don't 
embed in the source text and have to be done all over again when they (a) 
publish the illustrated edition, (b) publish the paperback edition, (c) 
produce a revised edition with new matter, (d) license the publishing or 
translation rights, or (e) do anything that changes the page breaks and 
screws the index locator numbers.  Using IXgen to edit or translate the 
index while preserving all index entries no matter how pages break has got 
to be a plus.

Trouble is, the outsourcing and cottage-industry nature of publishing 
means all those freelance copy-editors, typographers (book designers), and 
indexers would all have to purchase FrameMaker, whereas EVERYBODY has 
Quark Express, InDesign, and Word.

Sob!

Hedley
--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

SourceSafe??? Recommendations needed.

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

Marcus wrote:
> If you check in Frame files you are storing a copy of the template
> information every single time you commit. This can chew up your storage
> space fairly quickly.

Visual SourceSafe (VSS) does binary deltas on FrameMaker binary files. 
Template information is not repeated on each check-in.  When one of our 
repositories had reached 4 Gb I thought I would archive then delete all 
versions prior to the most recent and start with a new slimmer repository. 
 After several days' work and lots of anguish, I managed to save about 20 
percent -- scarcely worth the trouble.  That is, the base versions 
constituted 80 percent of the repository and the binary deltas about 20 
percent.

Subversion also stores binary deltas, so you can jam your graphics, FM 
files and Auld Uncle Tom Cobbleigh n'all into your repository.  And it's 
free, client-server (either with WebDav plus Apache, or its own server), 
cross-platform and performs atomic commits of a group check-in, that is, 
if one file fails to check-in the entire group check-in fails (A Good 
Thing).

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

More about Subversion [was "Re: SourceSafe??? Recommendations needed"]

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

Thought you might be interested in this summary of Subversion as an 
alternative to VSS.

Hedley

- Forwarded by Hedley Finger/AU/MYOB on 24/04/2006 09:46 AM -


Zhi Qiang Wu 
Sent by: dita-users at yahoogroups.com
20/04/2006 04:30 PM
Please respond to dita-users

To: dita-ot-developer at lists.sourceforge.net, 
dita-users at yahoogroups.com
cc: 
Subject:[dita-users] Proposal for using subversion instead 
of CVS



Dear all, 

Due to some known limitations of CVS, to improve the productivity and 
efficiency of the DITA-OT development process, we are now having a 
proposal to use Subverion instead of CVS as our version control system in 
SourceForge.net. 

Below are some simple introduction about Subversion, would you please help 
to have a review of this proposal and give us some comments about this 
proposal? Any suggestions or comments are welcome! Thank you for your 
kindly support! 


1. About subversion 

Subversion is a free/open-source version control system. The goal of the 
Subversion project is to build a version control system that is a 
compelling replacement for CVS in the open source community. The software 
is released under an Apache/BSD-style open source license. 


2. Subversion's Features 

# Most current CVS features. 
Subversion is meant to be a better CVS, so it has most of CVS's features. 
Generally, Subversion's interface to a particular feature is similar to 
CVS's, except where there's a compelling reason to do otherwise. 

# Directories, renames, and file meta-data are versioned. 
Lack of these features is one of the most common complaints against CVS. 
Subversion versions not only file contents and file existence, but also 
directories, copies, and renames. It also allows arbitrary metadata 
("properties") to be versioned along with any file or directory, and 
provides a mechanism for versioning the `execute' permission flag on 
files. 

# Commits are truly atomic. 
No part of a commit takes effect until the entire commit has succeeded. 
Revision numbers are per-commit, not per-file; log messages are attached 
to the revision, not stored redundantly as in CVS. 

# Apache network server option, with WebDAV/DeltaV protocol. 
Subversion can use the HTTP-based WebDAV/DeltaV protocol for network 
communications, and the Apache web server to provide repository-side 
network service. This gives Subversion an advantage over CVS in 
interoperability, and provides various key features for free: 
authentication, path-based authorization, wire compression, and basic 
repository browsing. 

# Standalone server option. 
Subversion also offers a standalone server option using a custom protocol 
(not everyone wants to run Apache 2.x). The standalone server can run as 
an inetd service, or in daemon mode, and offers basic authentication and 
authorization. It can also be tunnelled over ssh. 

# Branching and tagging are cheap (constant time) operations 
There is no reason for these operations to be expensive, so they aren't. 

Branches and tags are both implemented in terms of an underlying "copy" 
operation. A copy takes up a small, constant amount of space. Any copy is 
a tag; and if you start committing on a copy, then it's a branch as well. 
(This does away with CVS's "branch-point tagging", by removing the 
distinction that made branch-point tags necessary in the first place.) 

# Natively client/server, layered library design 
Subversion is designed to be client/server from the beginning; thus 
avoiding some of the maintenance problems which have plagued CVS. The code 
is structured as a set of modules with well-defined interfaces, designed 
to be called by other applications. 

# Client/server protocol sends diffs in both directions 
The network protocol uses bandwidth efficiently by transmitting diffs in 
both directions whenever possible (CVS sends diffs from server to client, 
but not client to server). 

# Costs are proportional to change size, not data size 
In general, the time required for a Subversion operation is proportional 
to the size of the changes resulting from that operation, not to the 
absolute size of the project in which the changes are taking place. This 
is a property of the Subversion repository model. 

# Choice of database or plain-file repository implementations 
Repositories can be created with either an embedded database back-end 
(BerkeleyDB) or with normal flat-file back-end, which uses a custom 
format. 

# Versioning of symbolic links 
Unix users can place symbolic links under version control. The links are 
recreated in Unix working copies, but not in win32 working copies. 

# Efficient handling of binary files 
Subversion is equally efficient on binary as on text files, because it 
uses a binary diffing algorithm to transmit and store successive 
revisions. 

# Parseable output 
All output of the Subversion command-line client is carefully designed to 
be both human readable and automatically parseable; 

Exporting RTF or MIF from InDesign

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

A colleague wants to know whether there is any way of exporting text 
content and graphics from InDesign to FrameMaker (either as binary FM or 
MIF).  Otherwise, export to Word or Rich Text Format (RTF) may have to 
suffice.  I've not used InDesign, so can't comment.

You would think this was easy as both InDesign and FrameMaker are Adobe 
products, but a visit to Adobe's site was not very informative.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Exporting RTF or MIF from InDesign

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Of course, if export to FM from InDesign was implemented, certain 
wild-eyed types would immediately assume that Adobe were going to 
discontinue InDesign in favour of FrameMaker. 
Moo-err-h-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! [think Vincent Price].
--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

maker.ini entries for Line End Options dialogue

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

Does anybody know if there are any maker.ini entries that will set the 
defaults of the Line End Options dialogue?  This dialogue is accessed by 
clicking the Set Line End Style button on the tools palette.  I want the 
default Cap Style to be Butt.  And is it possible to set your own custom 
arrows?

Examining the maker.ini files in my home directory and in the FrameMaker 
directory doesn't reveal any obvious or even obscure entries.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

So will Adobe release RoboHelp for FrameMaker ? 8^)

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

... seeing as how Adobe acquired the code when it took over Macromedia. Or 
will Adobe just open-source it?
--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

Fw: Keycaps fonts lose their already shady characters

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

> I recently needed to show actual key caps in some documentation.
> [...] I was able to  find three keycaps fonts,
> 
> If Character Map is set to the keycaps font and I select the
> characters corresponding to A B C a b and c , I get the A B C Alt
> Return and CapsLock key caps in the Characters To Copy box.  Copying
> these characters from Character Map and _pasting_ into FrameMaker
> retains these characters.  But, if I create a character or paragraph
> format set to use the keycaps font, and then _type_ A B C a b and c
> , I get A B C A B and C, except that the second lot of caps are
> slightly smaller, like small capitals.

 Er ... blush! Apologies to Mr and Mrs Adobe. I created both the keycaps 
character format and para format by using the New Format command in the 
designers to create formats that inherited most of their properties from 
the currently selected format. But I was asleep at the wheel and did not 
notice that both of those formats specified Small Caps. So FrameMaker did 
what it normally does for small caps -- map to the uppercase characters, 
then reduce their size. I didn't even notice the clue that was staring me 
in the face: "... except that the second lot of caps are slightly smaller, 
like small capitals".  Many grovelling apologies to whoever needs some at 
the moment.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Keycaps fonts lose their already shady characters

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

I recently needed to show actual key caps in some documentation.  After a 
plea on austechwriters and googling around, I was able to find three 
keycaps fonts, one shareware and not very aesthetic, and two of unknown 
provenance, probably copyright.  But they all exhibit the same baffling 
behaviour, so I'll just use one for the following examples.

If Character Map is set to the keycaps font and I select the characters 
corresponding to A B C a b and c , I get the A B C Alt Return and CapsLock 
key caps in the 
Characters To Copy box.  Copying these characters from Character Map and 
_pasting_ into FrameMaker retains these characters.  But, if I create a 
character or paragraph format set to use the keycaps font, and then _type_ 
A B C a b and c , I get A B C A B and C, except that the second lot of 
caps are slightly smaller, like small capitals.  Re-applying the keycaps 
character and paragraph formats makes no difference -- the a b c 
characters stay stubbornly alphabetic and do not display as Alt Return and 
CapsLock.

What is the reason for this odd behaviour and can anyone suggest a 
workaround other than copying from Character Map?  Can anybody direct me 
to other keycaps fonts that behave correctly in FrameMaker**, preferably 
freeware  (but I am prepared to pay a modest price out of my own pocket, 
even though it's my employers job).

Regards,
Hedley

** But Wordpad, Microsoft Word, and OpenOffice.org Writer display the 
correct characters when the paragraph or character format applies the 
keycaps font.  So can someone at Adobe tell me why FrameMaker won't handle 
these fonts correctly as displayed in Character Map and in the font viewer 
when you double-click the font file in the Windows Font folder?

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Can't Override Left/Right Master Page

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Angela:

> When I try to apply a Last Page master page to the last page of a 
chapter
> (to ensure that I have a blank page and that the footer doesn't appear),
> Frame applies the Last page, and then, after I save, Frame adds the
> Left/Right page back in. Any idea what's going on? Thank you for your 
help.
> I've had a few problems lately, and folks have responded so promptly 
with
> suggestions. Thank you.

Are you having some undesirable interaction with forcing a file to end on 
a left or right page?  See Format > Page Layout > Pagination.

Regards,
Hedley
--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Anyone used Tortoise CVS with Frame Files

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Martha:

>  I use TortoiseCVS with Frame files. I mark both .fm and .book files
>  as binary, so that each time I check in the entire file is replaced,

And if the product manager has just decided to restore the functionality 
that was removed a few days ago, how do you retrieve the version of the FM 
file that contains the content you deleted when the function was removed?

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

I'm lazy

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Cripes!  Rick must be a bigger mover and shaker than I thought.  What with 
".frameexpert" being a top-level domain up there with "uk", "au",  "cn", 
"de", "fr", etc!
http://www.frameexpert/plugins/pagelabeler/
--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

manipulating headers / footers through API?

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Can you explain what the problem is and why you think it is necessary to 
write a plug-in to solve it?  There are many ways to skin the FrameMaker 
rabbit and there might be solution which can be implemented with FM's many 
devious capabilities and existing plug-ins.
--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

Answer: Re: Odd bug printing FM to PDF

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

All:

The hotspot behaviour in generated lists is user-unfriendly but works well 

for cross-references and index page numbers.  A possible fix involving 
FrameScript follows:

@   Create a new character format where all properties are set to 
null.

@   Create a FrameScript event script that fires at the conclusion of 
a book 
generate/update.

@   The FrameScript would loop through all the generated paragraphs in 
the TOC 
and apply the null character format to the entire line.

This works because, although the various character properties created by 
the 
entry builders on the reference page would have formatted the line as you 
want, 
the only named character format on the entire line is the null format.

Regards,
Hedley



>Rick Quatro wrote:
>
>What Richard says is true, but this designed behavior is not very useful 
for 
>generated lists. For generated lists, it would have been better to have a 

>mechanism that would ignore character property changes and make the whole 

>paragraph a link.
>
>Rick
>
>>Diane Gaskill wrote:
>>
>>> I'm not sure whetehr to call it a bug or not, but it's
>>> definitely a known problem.   Anytime there is a character
>>> font change in the text of a link in the FM file, the link
>>> ends at that point.
>>
>>This is _neither_ a "bug" _nor_ a "known problem." To reiterate what
>>Fred and Rick have said, it's _intended_to_work_this_way_.
>>
>>The beginning and end of a hypertext link "hotspot" have to be defined
>>_somehow_. FM programmers _could_ have required us to insert two markers
>>for each link, one for the beginning and one for the end. Instead, they
>>reasoned as follows: "Authors will certainly want to make hotspots
>>identifiable by color, underlining, or some other formatting change; so
>>we'll let the extent of the formatting change define the hotspot."
>>
>>Just to be safe, they also terminated hotspots at the end of the pgf so
>>that you don't create a 30-page hotspot when you screw up. :-}
>>
>>Maybe you don't like the way this works. Maybe you have some other way
>>of defining the end of a hotspot that you'd prefer (so please enlighten
>>us; I'm at a loss to think of a better alternative).
>>
>>But this is the consciously-chosen functionality, the way it's
>>_designed_ to work. If you're not sure whether to call it a bug or not,
>>then you just don't understand.

--
Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
--
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
--

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Whoops! Nll (As Is) char format WON'T fix hotspots in generated paras

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Sorry about previous email.  The hotspot after a Hyperlink marker is read 
until the next CHANGE of formatting, whether applied anonymously or by a 
character format.  So if you heading is bold but your page number is 
light, the hotspot ends with bold.
--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

atw: Frame query

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Jill:

> If anyone is back at work yet - how can I get rid of a graphic I have 
'sent to back'. 
> In this case it is only a circle. I have looked up help and couldn't 
find anything.

A graphic exists in a context.  On a page, the context is the page's 
border, so that the 
graphic is in a z-ordinate or list from front to back with everything else 
on that page.
In an anchored frame, the graphic is in a front-to-back list with 
everything else in the 
anchored frame.

Save a back up of the file.

Ctrl-click each item that lies in front of the graphic item. Cut them to 
the clipboard.
Click on the unwanted graphic and delete it.  Select the context: in a 
page, click in the 
margin outside the text frame, in an anchored frame, Ctrl-click the 
border.

It is important to  select the context at this point because the x-y 
coordinates of the items 
on the clipboard are preserved and applied to position them in their 
original locations 
provided they are pasted back into the context whence they were cut.

Now paste from the clipboard.

Hope this helps, 
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

Those old book numbering blues

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Steve:

> >Then set your chapter title numbering as follows:
> >
> >Chapter\ <$chapnum>< >< =0>< =0>< =0>< =0>< =0>
> >
> >The < > placeholder after <$chapnum> is the one you want to continue
> >through the book. The < =0> resetters are for the numbering you
> >want to restart for each chapter, e.g. figure, table, equation
> >numbering, etc.  Is this what you want?
> 
> I'm not sure. How would this reset named numbering threads, such as
> 'T:<$chapnum>.'?

With this scheme, you don't need numbering flows, e.g.
  Chaps Whatever  Sects  Figs   Tables  Eqns   Steps 
Substeps
 Chapter\ <$chapnum>< >   < =0>  < =0>  < =0>   < =0>  < =0>  < 
=0>

See the section "Using counters in autonumber formats" in the "Text 
formatting" chapter of the User Guide.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

Those old book numbering blues

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Steve:

> I am using one autonumber thread to control stuff that needs to flow
> through a book. I just wanted to check that in this case, i.e.
> paragraph number threads not reset between chapters, there is no
> alternative to creating a separate 

How FM plug-in developers are losing corporate sales

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Hackers, code-cutters, and devil-whoppers:

FrameMaker is indeed blessed with many wonderful plug-ins that vastly 
increase its utility.  Most plug-ins came into being because their 
developers had an itch to scratch, and marketed them as a useful utility 
that a fellow sufferer might want.  That is, the assumption behind the 
business model is that most FrameMaker users personally own their copy and 
are completely responsible for maintaining and upgrading it, and are also 
the purchasing decision makers.  The reality is that most FM users are 
employees of companies who generally own multiple licences.

As someone whose job it is to support FrameMaker in a small team of ten 
writers, installing and updating a reasonable set of productivity 
enhancing plug-ins is a real pain.  I would rather be handcuffed and 
hog-tied, then made to wriggle naked across red-hot broken glass than set 
up a new writer with FM and a standard operating environment of plug-ins 
and their configuration files. 

Each developer has a different installation method, sometimes with an 
installer (yay!) but often requiring files to be copied into specific 
directories and maker.ini to be edited.  Each has different ideas about 
where the plug-in should be placed and where its configuration files 
should be.  Configuration files are sometimes just key-value *.ini files, 
other times special FrameMaker files are required, and then some 
initialisation information may even be on reference pages (I concede that 
sometimes specialist FM files or ref. pages are necessary).

And don't even get me started on the byzantine licensing schemes.  Some 
require you to submit the FM serial number from which a hash activation 
key is calculated by the developer.  I really love collecting the serial 
numbers from ten copies of FrameMaker every time we upgrade to a new 
release, then emailing them to the developer, receiving the hash keys, and 
visiting each installation to type in the activation key so the plug-in 
will work. Others require you to edit an *.ini file and some have a 
registration dialogue that pops up.  Yeah, I really love going around to 
ten workstations and setting up eight plug-ins.

So you can see how the administration and maintenance of a reasonable 
number of plug-ins, plus configuring them (don't forget that!) could be a 
real pain and deter corporate customers.  So have you plug-in developers 
collectively realised what a huge barrier faces corporate customers who 
would love to use plug-ins but are deterred by the hassle?  A few of you 
out there who are completely in denial will suggest that writers could 
install the plug-ins themselves.  Yeah, right, and they will probably take 
their turn at stacking the dishwasher in the kitchenette, not stealing 
someone else's coffee, parking their cars in the spaces reserved for staff 
and not in those reserved for customers which are much closer to the 
office, completing their timesheets on time, and not creating cowboy para 
formats.

Adobe has its Creativity Suite of applications.  Why can't we have our 
FrameMaker Plug-in Productivity Package consisting of ten useful plug-ins 
with a consistent installation and registration system that sys admins and 
Tech. Comms support people can use to easily deploy as a standard 
environment on all the workstations within their care?  Too hard?  Then 
why don't you just licence your code to Adobe to clean up and integrate 
cleanly into the menu structure and GUI?

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

How FM plug-in developers are losing corporate sales [Did I mention on-line help?]

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Addendum:

And if all plug-in developers could agree where to stash their HTML Help 
*.chm files, then the on-line help for all the plug-ins would come up as 
one apparently seamless help with a merged TOC and Index.  [Dream on, 
Hedley.]

Roo guards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

DITA, and XMetaL working with FM

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

I saw a few familar names at Blast Radius' webinar (just concluded) on 
using XMetaL DITA Edition with FrameMaker.  I'm pretty sure I heard Paul 
Prescod say that a build path to go from DITA XML to FM to PDF is being 
added to the DITA open toolkit.  Can anyone confirm this?  Or was it that 
just XMetaL were going to add FM to their version of the toolkit?

The demo looked quite convincing.  Presumably XML topic files are grouped 
into chapters, a book file is built, and populated with those chapters, 
then the TOC and Index is compiled.  Sure like to know how they are doing 
all this from an ANT build file as FM on Windows doesn't have anything 
like the command-line capabilities of fmbatch on UNIX.

And has anybody purchased FrameMaker Server, whatever that is?  The Adobe 
site is rather coy but says that (somehow) you can process RTF, XML, and 
Auld Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all in some kind of batch process.  So what 
IS FM Server?  Is it some kind of command-line version of FM, i.e. fmbatch 
resurrected on Windows.

Anybody like to comment on what they saw?  Did you think that this might 
be a way to avoid XSL-FO and get some more mileage out of all your FM 
licences?

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

Conditional Text and cross-references

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

An alternative to typing  or  is to 
type , which does the same job.**  Have you tried these alternatives to 
see if they fix the problem with cross-references?

Hedley

**  The second alternative contains the blind Peter, i.e. the backwards 
facing P, just in case it comes out as some other character.

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

markers that include the section *number* in the marker text?

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Ananda:

> [...] The idea is that we should be able to generate a list of
> markers or index of markers which will be used to create another doc
> that explains the changes in the text. [...] is there a way to have
> the marker text grab the auto-generated section number for that
> paragraph?

You can generate an index or page-sequence list from your new Change 
markers much as you create an ordinary index or list.  But on the IX 
reference page, find the IndexIX paragraph in the IX flow (text frame). 
The IndexIX paragraph controls the look and feel of the page numbers 
but also specifies which locator to use which, by default, is normally 
<$pagenum>.

Replace 
<$pagenum> 
with 
<$paranumonly[+,Heading1,Heading2,Heading3]>
where Heading1, etc. are the para formats from your hierarchy of 
headings -- as many as you have heading levels.  The plus sign (+) 
makes FM search backwards from the location of the Change marker 
to the first para that matches one of the Heading1, etc. formats, then 
picks up its number.

The generated list or index will now contain entries by section number 
no matter where in a section the Change marker is placed -- it doesn't 
have to be in the heading paragraph.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

Merge lists?

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Moooer aha ha ha ha!  Mate, you just asked the Catholics and the 
Protestants to kiss and make up!
--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

TP for FM?

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

What about:

@   editing fontlists on UNIX platforms
@   inserting tables into MML files
@   specifying Distiller parameters with PDFmark operators in 
PostScript flows
@   hacking FM 5.5.6 Beta for Linux so it will continue to run beyond 
its expiry date

Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005

ADMIN Announcing Framers on Mailman!

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Lisa:

"How will this affect you?"  Good question; it will probably drive me 
nuts.  All the mailman lists I have seen look more or less like <
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/>.

Yes, folks, the archives are grouped by month.  No way to see a continuous 
scrolling list of articles by date or thread or subject, ACROSS month 
boundaries.  No way to search the archives.

Sure hope the frameusers list is going to be a lot more usable than the 
example I've given, typical of all the mailman lists I have seen.  It 
would be fascinating to hear what Jakob Nielsen or Alan Cooper would have 
to say about the usability of mailman.  Oh well, guess we can all go to 
Yahoo! Groups which has had a lot of thought put into its interface.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2005