Hi. Big problem with the recent upgrade to FM 2017. The en rules are not non-breaking any more, and I can't fix it using Text Options. It didn't happen with the previous version of FM. It means any document that gets opened up now will be messed up in a big way. Anybody had this happen to them, and know how to resolve it?

Hey guys,

I am fairly new to the FrameMaker-scripting-thing. I basically have a folder, full of .xml files that shall be opened with a structured application and then be saved as a .fm file. I can already do that but I have to manually tell FrameMaker which structured application to use (as in How do I load an XML file, and save it as an fm file). But I can't really say which one should be used. I'd rather have the user specify the application once for the first file (maybe even open the dialog that can be seen when manually opening a .xml-file) and use it for the rest of the files as well.

Pseudo-Code:

var structApp = ChooseStructApp();

openXmlFile(filePath, structApp);

Does anyone know how to do anything like that?

Kind regards,

Tom

I have found issues with sharing files, specifically TOC, LOT, LOF between these OS systems. Has anyone else experienced these type of issues? Some of the errors I receive from FrameMaker are "this file is locked in view mode", spurious Book file errors, cross reference errors, font errors, cannot open file due to unavailable font error, etc.

We are just two writers with different OS's sharing documentation and editing responsibilities. We follow the identical save (auto save off), update document, building of generated files, etc. procedures.

Any ideas?

Thanks ahead of time for your help

I need to create 3 master pages (Left, Right, and Blank) for Custom layout-- landscape orientation, Legal (11 X 17) size. I know these pages need to be in a separate document inserted after  appropriate chapter in the book file (to accommodate the different flow).  I''ll be able to include all needed pages in this new "document" that I will insert as a separate "file" after the appropriate chapter file in the book.

On these Master pages, I need small text frames on Master page at top with document part numbers, and at the bottom with centered Classification line followed by page number line <$chapnum>-<$curpagenum> centered below it. Between the two I need a large text frame into which I can insert content on the Body pages.

I have created 3 text frames on Master page -- one for header info, one for footer info, and large one in center for content.

Problems I'm having;

1. Header variables (one on right side, and one on left side) insert correctly, but when I go to tab them to the correct side, they go all "black," and I have to page down and back up to see them.

2. Not sure how to rotate pages correctly so I can put cursor into body page and insert content.

3. I believe I'm missing some very basic but important step to make this work easily. On body page, cursor is not in correct place to insert content, which needs to include:

• Text followed by
• Anchored frame with graphic inserted
• Figure number caption.

I have not found instructions for this in help or the Unstructured FrameMaker 11 fundamentals book. NOT a complaint about either source; it's probably my user error, or just not understanding how to do this.

Can anybody please tell me how to do this?

Many thanks,

Jhoyt

Dear colleagues,

I'm having an issue with converting FM files (version 2017) with cyrilic characters. The original file is written in FM 2017 and displays the characters without any problems. In order to make this file readable for my colleagues who use older versions of FM (8), I converted it into .mif. However, all characters got replaced by question marks. Is there any other way to convert this file to make it compatible with older FM versions without loosing the data?

Many thanks.

Nico

[Book with 30 FM files. I had four files that were missing bookmarks, which prompted me to try fixing the problem. Big mistake].

Because FM won't allow me to set the order of paragraphs in the Include Paragraphs box (default is alphabetical), I'm stuck with this order: 1Head, 2Head, Chapter Title, Procedure Title (with appropriate indents).

Unfortunately, that's the order in which the Bookmarks actually appear in the saved PDF: that is, the 1Head and 2Head bookmarks appear above (before) the Chapter Title. I tried setting an umbrella setting for the entire book, but that only resulted in dozens of unwanted paragraphs (Step_1, Table_Cap_Next, etc.) added to the PDF settings for each file in the book

Perhaps related to this issue, is that the TOC had the same problem, but I could at least reorder the TOC entries manually.

Our department has to output several large policy manuals (5k to 10k pages) each month for an internal audience of several thousand users. One of our requirements is that each month's changes should be visible to the users. So deleted text is shown as strike through and new text is colored. Whether it's optimal or advisable is irrelevant—suffice it to say that changing the requirement is an impossibility.

We'd like to use tracked changes to satisfy the requirement, but these manuals are published and then archived on an internal website that includes 10+ years of materials. We publish using Frame 2017's Responsive HTML option, and it doesn't seem to want to show the markup. It will show the deleted and added text, but no color or strike through. We've been forced to use character tagging to indicate changes, but, as you can imagine, with 5k to 10k page manuals and sometimes thousands of changes per month, it's incredibly inefficient and inconvenient to first make and tag the changes, but even more so to remove the tagging. Our method, which is the only one we've been able to come up, is to select the text through to its paragraph marker, click Default Format, and then reapply the Paragraph tag. If there is a single word tagged within a sentence, the format will change with Default font, but not if the whole paragraph is selected. In addition, we can't simply select the entire text flow/file contents and use Default Font, because all of the selected text will pick up the tagging of the first paragraph in the file/flow. That means going line by line unless paragraphs happen to have the same tag.

Is there a way, even if it involves using extendscript or some deep, technical solution, to publish to HTML and preserve the formatting of tracked changes? If not, is there some way to make character tagging more efficient? In particular, is there a way to remove character tags more efficiently? Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.

Hello,

I'm converting a framemaker file to pdf that has quite a few images. However, there is a particular image where the color is lost in the pdf. I create the images in Adobe Illustrator and save them as eps file. The images are imported as a referenced file into Frame. In FrameMaker the images look perfectly fine but the pdf file loses it's colors when converted from FM to pdf. I am using FrameMaker 2017. Saving the figure in pdf from illustrator does not distort the image. Attached is the image where you can see the arrows have lost the colors.

One of the teams I support (as template poobah) wants to generate alerts when a file is updated, so they can address requirements associated with the file. We are using unstructured Frame and simply publishing to .pdf. I have done significant research and reading about ExtendScript, so I don't need to know about or get advice on that. It's far too complicated for that team (and far beyond my pay scale-to-benevolence factor for this skill). I found an older note I made about thinking I had found a far simpler way to accomplish this, but I cannot remember what it was; it was so cool I was sure I'd remember to backtrack and test, but other projects arose. *grrrr* It's of course not associated with OLE, nor could I find anything relevant in the Help files when I checked on the Hypertext option for Message Client. I've looked at every logical option on every menu and searched online to smithereens, to no avail. I want to know whether scripting is the only method for configuring notifications in Frame. Thoughts?

I use a paragraph format (command-prompt) for our CLI-based product. It uses auto-numbering CLI<network-admin@Leaf2> as the format so I don't have to type this in throughout the documentation. However, this paragraph format doesn't get picked up during the conversion. Do I format this as numbering and use upper-roman or upper-alpha to map the style?

Thanks

FM 2017 Release, all updates installed, DITA 1.3, Win7Pro Machine.

I have created <indexterm> tags using both the new marker dialog that appears when I add the tag to a document, and also through the Edit markers pod.

My MO is to create one tag that contains all of the relevant indexing information for that section, e.g. topic:subtopic;restated topic:sub;topic alone

When I close and reopen the file, I end up with (in the example above) three different <indexterm> tags with the different terms separated out, so <topic:subtopic><restated topic:sub>, etc.

I guess this isn't problematic (output seems OK) but I liked keeping things simple with the single tag, and I don't recall this behavior in previous versions of FM that I have used.

Has something changed? Is this expected/desired behavior? I have not changed the R/W rules or EDDs for index terms.

Unprecedented request from product manager: "Can you make a .pdf from this document that's suitable for automatic reading out loud?" As any Victorian novelist would say, it was the work of a moment … Save as .pdf, and activate the Tagged .pdf option

This immediately resolved one problem someone else (with inferior software, naming no names) had run in to; Acrobat no longer reads out the header and footer. But, it introduced a new one that nearly had me falling off my chair … here's what I heard when we hit the ToC.

"Contents. Introduction. dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot …"

Yes, Acrobat was conscientiously reading out the leader dots. I've adjusted the ToC layout as the quickest solution, but now have a document that doesn't look the same as all the others in the set. Does anyone have any tweak for getting Acrobat to skip the dots when reading out loud?

Thanks in advance!

Hi There,

I'm using FrameMaker (2015) in Unstructured Mode and I need some help to understand what I'm doing, as the system seems to want to prevent me from doing the things I want to do. (creation or modification ot tables, to name one thing)

I have inherited this system and 'legacy' documents from my predecessor in 2013 - I had very little training on it at the time (there is no budget allocated for a proper course*) and I have to update these old documents on a regular basis.

The documents in question, are Installation Guides (Assembly Instructions) for Commercial Playground Equipment.

*All of our current documents are created with InDesign, as it seems to be more flexible, but I still have to maintain the Legacy stuff, so I need to understand FrameMaker from that point of view.

It would me nice, if someone could look at one of my documents and talk me through whats what - is there any remote desktop facility with any of the support options in our subscription package, to allow a technical support person to talk me through how to do stuff?

I really struggle with it at times and often end up finding a workaround, which is not ideal, but it gets the job done without a lot of messing around.

By the way, I can't think of all the questions I have right now - they come to me from time to time.

My workflow for creating content in the documents, is;

Artwork created in AutoCAD, Printed to PDF, Imported into FrameMaker.

All text, tables etc., are created within Frame Maker.

Hallo Community,

Wir verwenden FM 2015 als Editor und als Produktionswerkzeug für FM-Buch und PDF aus unserem Content Management System. Seit unser CMS auf die neuesten XML-Werkzeuge umgestellt wurde, funktioniert die Produktion eines FM-Buchs nicht mehr, da das XML-Attribut <standalone="no"> nicht verarbeitet werden kann. Folgende Fehlermeldung erscheint:

XML Read Report Log
Source Document: C:\Sirius\Preview\PREV7EB0E294426F4313B32CB2D7B1BD0A05.tmp.xml

XML Parser Messages (Document Instance)
Error at file C:\Sirius\Preview\Software_Starten_psv.xml, line 1, char 54, Message: The 'standalone=' string is only allowed in the main XML entity
Error at file C:\Sirius\Preview\psv-soft-msa_kap4_OptikEinstellen.xml, line 1, char 53, Message: The 'standalone=' string is only allowed in the main XML entity
Error at file C:\Sirius\Preview\Anzeigeeigenschaften_Video_Einstellungen_msa_msa-3d_psv.xml, line 1, char 53, Message: The 'standalone=' string is only allowed in the main XML entity
Parse error at line 1, char 37: Syntax error
Parsing aborted.
Parse error at line 1, char 37: Syntax error
Parsing aborted.

Wir verwenden eine eigene DTD und EDD (kein S1000D oder DITA). Müssen wir an geeigneter Stelle etwas deklarieren wegen des Attributs? Bisher waren unsere Dokumente frei von dem Attribut und daher hatten wir bisher auch keine Schwierigkeiten bei der Produktion.

Kann uns da jemand helfen?

Vielen Dank für Eure Unterstützung

Daniela Klotz

Hello,

My framemaker 12 document has mostly portrait pages with a few landscape pages  to accommodate large tables. When I save to PDF, the landscape pages get cut off at the same width as the portrait pages so the columns get cut off. How can I get each page to print to pdf in the correct way?

Thanks for any help you can give!

Abby

Dear all,

I observe a difference in script behaviour when using jsx sources compared to jsxbin:

My large script FMcalc consists of 10 modules with a total of 208 functions:

• The jsxbin is built by opening FMcalc.jsx and exporting as jsxbin.
• When installing this FMcalc.jsxbin into the FM startup folder (together with an fm-template file and a pdf help file) provides a corrclty working script.
• When trying to use the jsx sources things don't work any more: The script loads without error, but the dialogue texts are not in the dialogues and settings are only known in the main module (FMcalc.jsx), not in the other modules, e.g. FMcalc_Evaluation.jsx in the function EvaluateStmntsC (text) { //Evaluate contents of #calc marker statement}. Outside of the main module only the intitial values as defined in FMcalc_Globals are known. There they are either set to distinct values or to undefined.
• I have observed that the jsxbin is a flattened out item - as if I would concatenate all the source modules to a single file. Hence 'script-directory' is the same in all functions. Evaluting the script directory in one of the included source modules provides a different level than in the main module which includes the others.

After reading about some ExtendScript include quirks (e.g. by williamadowling) I'm completely puzzled. It's about Indesign, but this may also be true for FM: #include requires absolte paths !?! This would be OK on my own machine - but nobody else could use my script. The main script currently start with these lines:

#target framemaker
#include FMcalc\FMcalc_Globals.jsx            // all declarations
#include FMcalc\FMcalc_Ancillary.jsx          // ancillary functions
#include FMcalc\FMcalc_dialogC.jsx            // incl. button functions etc.
#include FMcalc\FMcalc_dialogS.jsx            // incl. button functions etc.
#include FMcalc\FMcalc_dialogDS.jsx           // incl. button functions etc.
#include FMcalc\FMcalc_dialogV.jsx            // ancillary dialogue
#include FMcalc\FMcalc_Evaluation.jsx         // for the evaluation process
#include FMcalc\FMcalc_Markers.jsx            // functions related to markers
#include FMcalc\FMcalc_Math.jsx               // math functions for evaluation
#include FMcalc\FMcalc_Texts_en.jsx           // From the relevant one the object will be cloned
#include FMcalc\FMcalc_Texts_de.jsx           // see FMcalc\FMcalc_Ancillary.jsx, SwitchUIlanguage
#include FMcalc\FMcalc_Texts_fr.jsx 

main ();

function main () { 
// Calling   SetupFMcalc, SetupNotifications, ReportInfo, SetUpMenus
}

function SetUpMenus () { 
//=== Define the menu items for document and book 
}

function Command (cmd) { 
  ...    case 2:      CalculateInDoc();                               break;  ...
}

function CalculateInDoc() { 
// Evaluate Calc/Series markers in document
// Called by Command, CalculateInBook
// Calling   SaveCurrentLocation, SetDisplay, GetDSPanelItems, CollectMarkers, CollectVariables, 
//           EvaluateC, PaletteCalcMarkers, RestoreLocation, FindAndDeleteVariable, InsertVariable, 
//           DeleteUnusedVariables, GetRefPageCategory, oTxtScheme, GetAllSchemes, EvaluateS, 
//           PaletteSeriesMarkers
}
...

So what is the secret of breaking up a long script into modules to avoid clutter in the Startup folder and nevertheless provide source code rather than jsxbin?

Klaus

Edit 2018-03-08 10:59

Mimicing the include process of the jsxbin building I have put everything together and get a complely unmanageable jsx file of nearly 8000 lines. But also here the settings are not gotten as defined in an early executed routine, not even the default from the initial global setting, but undefined!

I am new to Framemaker and have inherited a book file where the structure is not valid. It has a high level tag of NoName and BOOK-COMPONENTS for each .fm file it contains.

I want to know how to edit these tags so I can make this have a valid structure. I have searched the help and have found the following advice:

'A new book file has a structure with a highest-level element called NoName and an element called BOOK-COMPONENT for each document and generated file you added to the book. When you update the book, the elements for structured files change to the tag of the highest-level element from the file.

In most cases, you need to make a few corrections in the structure of a book file after updating. For example, you should change the NoName element to the highest-level element defined for the book. And if any file elements are still called BOOK-COMPONENT, add structure to those files and then generate and update again.'

But it does not say HOW to do the above. Can anyone please help me?

I can still generate a PDF file from this information but I'd really like to know how I can make these source files structurally sound.

Hi,

I am trying to get Condition tag name if present for TextItem inside paragraph

F_TextRangeT trSel, trFound;
F_IntsT condIds;
F_PropValsT findParams;


trSel.beg.objId = trSel.end.objId = hPgfId;
trSel.beg.offset = trSel.end.offset = 0;


findParams = F_ApiAllocatePropVals(1);
findParams.val[0].propIdent.num = FS_FindText;
findParams.val[0].propVal.valType = FT_String;


//For demo "c" is the first character in the string of every F_TextItemT
findParams.val[0].propVal.u.sval = F_StrCopyString((ConStringT)"c");


trFound = F_ApiFind(docId, &trSel.beg, &findParams);


//Setting insertion point
F_ApiSetTextRange(FV_SessionId, m_doc.getDocId(), FP_TextSelection, &trFound);


//Get condition ids at insertion point
condIds = F_ApiGetInts(FV_SessionId, docId, FP_InCond);

I am able to get the name by making every textitem a insertion point and fetching its condition values.

Is there any way to fetch conditional tag name without adding insertion point for a textItem?

Thanks,
Abhijeet

[Moved to Scripting Forum by moderator: more chance of programming expertise here.]

how can I use Adobe frame maker to describe a nonfiction book?

Hello,

I created a framemaker document with the following content:

Heading

Body text before frame

After Frame

When I export it to HTML ("Save as" -> HTML) the contents of the anchored frame are converted into an image. The following is the code I get (leaving out the HTML headers) - note the IMG:

<TITLE>Heading</TITLE></HEAD><BODY><DIV><H2 class="Heading1"><A NAME="pgfId-473591"></A>Heading</H2><P class="Body"><A NAME="pgfId-929642"></A>Body text before frame</P><P class="Body"><A NAME="pgfId-929663"></A> </P><DIV><MAP NAME="Test_Export-1"></MAP><IMG SRC="Test_Export-1.gif" USEMAP="#Test_Export-1" ALT=""></DIV><P class="Body"><A NAME="pgfId-929653"></A>After Frame</P></DIV></BODY>

Framemaker is also generating the Test_Export-1.gif image - with the contents of the frame. How do I instead export the contents of the text frame directly in HTML (either inside a single celled table or just inline with the text)?

I'm a beginner in using Framemaker - so please forgive if I'm missing something very basic. Thanks for any help!

Regards,

Karthick