FrameMaker

Once upon a time in my consultancy days … the company I was working with asked if I knew any program that a) might do a better job than Lotus WordPro; b) wasn't made by Microsoft. I said I'd heard a colleague mention something called FrameMaker, though I hadn't worked with it myself. The following week, I came in and found a copy of FM 5.5 on my desk plus a PostIt: "Niels – install. Learn. Use."So I obediently did, and since then I've enjoyed not just using the software but also taking part in the forum and (in more expansive days) visiting events such as the Chatauqua. It has always seemed to me that a face-to-face gathering for the forum would make for a great party!Time passes, though, and now retirement looms. Not a question today, then, just a general thank-you to everyone who's helped me over the years. Whatever the future holds, good luck and happy Framing :-}

I have been using FrameMaker for over 20 years.  I think it is a good product overall but there are some bugs in it that are extremely annoying and I am amazed that they haven't fixed over the years, in spite of releasing many new versions and new GUIs.     I currently use the 2017 version, so I don't know if the new version still has these bugs.   If anyone can tell me, i would consider pushing my employer to get us the new version if these bugs are gone. 1) when you use the scroll on the mouse it is EXTREMELY slow.   it takes many turns of the wheel just to get through one page.   when i view the same document in PDF/Acrobat (also Adobe product), the scroll is normal.   It seems that FrameMaker overtakes the scroll controll and adjusts it to about 1/4 the responsiveness as compared to every other program.  I see no reason for this and it is extremely annoying to the point i can't even use the scroll when I am worki

This poor horse is most likely beyond rescue from all the flogging, but I'd like to resuscitate the poor creature. I've been using Framemaker (Unustructured) for the past 15 years, starting on FM 7. I've always had to work with styles and tables defined by others. A few years ago I was in the position to redesign the styles (paragraph and character) and tables for our training manuals (book) to bring them into line with our corporate style guidelines. This resulted in 3 primary documents:Template_Master.fm: This is the master template all documents is created from.Variables.fm: This documents contains the standard variables used across all manuals. A copy of this file is created for each manual (book) with the variables updated accordingly.ConditionalText.fm. This document contains all the standard conditions used across all manuals. A copy of this file is created for each manual (book) with the relevant conditions applied.When a manual (book) is updated and prepared for publicati

I'm having trouble understanding the use of the symbols in rules in a conversion table. My understanding is: | = any one of the items in the sequence an occur & = Items can occur in any order , = Items must occur in the given order + = Item is mandatory and can occur more than once * = Item is optional and occur more than once ? = Item is optional and can occur only once ( ) =  subclause of rule(s)   Say I have 3 elements: Element A, which must occur at least once (first), but can appear multiple times after that Element B, which is optional, can appear multiple times but only once per preceding Element A Element C, which wrappes Elements A and B. I could have any of the following combinations of elements A and B: A AA AB AABA ABAA AABABAA All of which should wrap in Element C.   The rule I'm trying to create in my Convervsoin Table is: Wrap Element A, followed by multiple instances of Element A and/or an Element B, in any order or combination, in Element C. I've tri

My team has a chronic  problem with equations in FrameMaker. They look fine in FrameMaker, but when converted to help in WebWorks ePublisher, the edges are cut off so that you can't see the math symbols. Today I discovered that the equation looked cut off on my computer but fine on another writer's computer. An example is attached. At one point, I thought the solution was to add a little space around the equations with a FrameScript. That worked beautifully a few times. Now the problem is back. Has anyone run into this problem? We're using unstructured FrameMaker 2015. All of the writers are using the same fonts. We've tried unshrinkwrapping and reshrinkwrapping. And like I said, adding space around the equations (inside the frames) helped only temporarily.

Hi there, i'm back again...  So after much trepidation, I managed to get all of my framemaker outputs working smoothly and was very happy.  This was all done in a test sub folder, structured:B:/ Production Documents > Frame_Maker_Demo > Doc Name  (This level holds FM Files, Images and output folders) > HTML5 Output Outputs worked great and I was happy with it so I've made some folder structures in live folders to start authoring into... for exampleB:/ Production Documents > Dpt Name > Doc Type > Doc Name (Same as above) > HTML5 Output I recreated the document I had been testing from scratch, referencing images in the new folder directly and recreating topics as my initial Copy-Pasta effort didn't work. When outputting to HTML5 to the new output location, I immediately got the following HTML5 error on each TOC topic reading ":( it may have been moved, edited or deleted)" see attachement. Initially I had iss

I am using Framemaker 2019 to edit a book created with Framemaker 10. When opening the book, I am prompted to convert it to the current Framemaker format (i.e., 2019). I do so and can then edit the various documents within the book without any issues. But Framemaker 2019 crashes when I select "EDIT/UPDATE" to update cross references and table of contents, list of figures, and list of tables. Any suggestions?

Our team needs a repository for FrameMaker documents.The first try is a SharePoint environment - but I ran in a few problems while testing.I uploaded all data in the same directory structure as on my own computer. But the linking to graphics or to reference items get broken. In a second step, I wanted to test if editing offline is possible. I downloaded the FrameMaker items as directory. Now, it is not possible to open an .fm document. Instead, it has to be converted from a txt or xml file format. The uploaded fm documents are native fm, not xml or txt format. After I studied the SharePoint 2013 help, I'm not really convinced that FrameMaker file formats are supported by SharePoint in the same way as Microsoft Office products. How deep is the integration of FrameMaker in SharePoint?Is there a better choice for a repository than SharePoint - maybe Git/GitHub, Tortoise SVN, or SubVersion? 

Hi all, I created a couple of data modules and saved them on a network. I can open these data modules "Common Source Data" without any problem. When I create a publication module I insert the wanted data modules using "dmRef" which opens the common source data module automatically. However, when I switch it to the publication module book, all the added data modules have a question mark icon, and when I try to open them an error message pops up and says that the file name is wrong and can't find the file. When I add the same data module from the same path manually to the book there is no error. How can I fix this problem. I will really appreciate any help. Thanks in advance. 

In our unstructured documents, we have multi-level headings, up to 6 levels deep. We are moving to structured documents. Each Heading element is wrapped in its own section, so a Section can consist of a Heading (followed by other elements), followed by another (sub-)Section, etc.An oddity we have is that, in our unstructured documents, the heading levels are not sequencial and can be followed by any heading of a lower level, i.e Heading Level 1 can be followed by a Heading level 3.When coverting to a structured document, we need to retain this structure. In our Conversion Table we have rules that successfully wrap the headings in the appropriate, cascasing, sections.This only works if the respective elements are present. If any of the heading levels are missing, the structure is incorrect. I.e. if, in our unstructure document, we have Heading lvl 1 following by Heading lvl 3, in the structured document, both are wrapped in a Level 1 Section, instead of the Level 3 Section being wrapped

Kia Ora everyone,  I've been playing with the Indigo skin and really like the look and feel of it,  Just curious about whether or not I can change the "Welcome to our Help Center" tag line.  I'm aware this is possible within Robohelp, however i'm doing this within Framemaker.  Any advice is greatly appreciated. 

Hi. I have been trying to add custom attributes to FrameMaker 2020 to try and integrate it with a CMS that uses a specific scheme for such things in its own integrated editor. Thus far, I have not found the means to do so. Ideally, I ought to be able to set a Choice in terms of value for such attributes as well. Some of my attempts are recorded below:1. Preferences > CMS > Custom Attributes: This only supports specific CMS systems and does not seem to add those attributes to the list of attributes available to different elements.2. Structure > DITA > Customise DITA > Customise DITA Shell: I can remove attributes from the list to hide them but not add custom attributes.3. Insert > Conditional Tags > Create New Tag: These use a completely different notation from XML attributes.4. Adding them to DTD and importing that to FrameMaker.Any suggestions on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.

Hi,My colleague has made layout corrections in a series of FrameMaker files (after they were translated via a CAT tool). When I open these FrameMaker files on my pc, all paragraph styles seem to be reset: manual overrides made by my colleague are gone. For example, my colleague has changed the start property of one paragraph to "Top of column", but when I open the file this property has been reset to "Anywhere", which is the default for this style. When another colleague opens the files, the manual overrides are preserved, so it looks like the problem is on my machine. We have done this kind of work for many years, and we never had this problem before.We use FrameMaker 2015 for this customer, but the problem also happens when I open the files in FrameMaker 2017.Does anyone have a clue of what is going wrong?  Thanks and regards,Daniëlla

Hi,   When I insert a new image via File | Import | File or Insert | Image, then I cannot undo this operation via the Undo icon or Edit | Undo. Steps to Reproduce:Create a new file.Insert a new image via File | Import | File or Insert | Image.Then check, whether you can undo this operation. When I do this, the command and the icon are grayed out. Can anyone reproduce this? Or does this happen only on my PC?   Best regards   Winfried

Hi There,I have existing document, created in FM 11, which uses Note and Caution Styles. I want to change Note and Caution icons, but I am unable to do that. The existing icons have not been inserted using anchored frames, but have been embedded using autonumber format.Posting below the existing style definitions of Note and Caution in FM 11: Existing result in the document after applying the above style definitions:  I want the desired output as: Can someone help me with how to change these icons in FM 11?Thanks and Regards,Rinni

My company uses structured FrameMaker 12 and is hiring a new technical writer who doesn't have FrameMaker experience. They are also upgrading from FrameMaker 12 to the latest version. There are templates for most of the jobs and all of the files used to produce manuals are in a vault. Since all of the procedures to produce a manual are documented, would it be better to start the inexperienced writer with the old version and then upgrade and get him training on the new version?

HiI recently installed Frame 16. It allows me to open a book or a document, and then crashes.I checked for license issues, and it seems fine.I am on a Windows 10. ThanksUday 

When I resize an image in FrameMaker 2020, the anchored frame resizes to the image automatically. How do I turn this off. Is there an FDK/ExtendScript property that I can use to turn it off? Thank you.

Can Frame 5.5 be used together Windows 10?

In our EDD, we have a Section element that consists of a mandatory Heading element. It can then be followed by any of the following optional elements, in any order and they can appear multiple times:Navigation (Table element)Paragraph (<TEXT> element)HowToInstruction (Table element)FieldList (Table element)Section (Section element, creating a sub-section)In our Conversion Table (to apply structure to our unstructured documents), I have a rule to wrap the elements. I tried using the | symbol (any one of the items can occur): E:Heading, (Navigation* | E:Paragraph* | HowToInstructions* | FieldList* | Section*), as well as the & symbol (items can occur in any order): E:Heading, (Navigation* & E:Paragraph* & HowToInstructions* & FieldList* & Section*). In both cases, the rule will only work if all the elements appear. If any of the elements are missing, the rule doesn't work.

We have recently purchased additional licenses of subject software for use on an air-gapped network. We are not able to install. What is the method to accomplish?

Hello All,Please avdise ...When I try to open and XML file in the DITA example fm set (TRAVELDITA) in ..C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe FrameMaker 2017\Structure\xml\TravelDITAI get an error message stating "Unable to open file!" and "Try opening it manually and checking for errors". How should I open it manually? What errors should I look for?I also tried coping TRAVEL DITA from another colleague's machine but still the same problems. ThanksRoy 

Hello, Does FrameMaker 2020 have change control or does it need a CMS to be integrated? Thank you

Hi all,I'm hoping someone can help with this. I'm using FrameMaker 2019/DITA and have a document that is combined English/Chinese Simplified. I have activated the Adobe Heiti font using Creative Cloud and have some of the DITA elements defined to use this font in FrameMaker. All works well in authoring. However, when I publish to PDF via the FM book route, and enable the Use Acrobat Disiller for PDF generation option in the Publish Setting dialog, no PDF is produced. This is the error displayed in the Distiller window:%%[ Error: undefinedresource; OffendingCommand: findresource ]%%Stack:/CIDFont/AdobeHeitiStd-Regular{--pop-- 4 --index-- --add--}/AdobeHeitiStd-Regular-hf/WinCharSetFFFF-H/AdobeHeitiStd-RegularH%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%Distill Time: 00 Hour(s) : 00 Minute(s) : 00.156 Second(s)**** End of Job **** If I disable the  Use Acrobat Disiller for PDF generation option

I am trying to create a 1pt frame border around my Framemaker book images.  I created an Object Style for an image and named the Object Style: Image Border. I applied the border from the Object Style Catalog (Image Border) to the image I created the Object Style from and the border applied just fine.  I clicked on a second image, applied Image Border to it, and the image resizes to the size of the original image that I created Image Border from.  I need to find out how the Object Style Image Border resizes when applied to each new image, instead of resizing exactly to the same dimensions as the orginal image every other time.