Adding Callout Lines In FrameMaker

Hi,

I also just have such a line group on my reference page (group of two lines, one black on the top, one white and slightly thicker in the background). When I need it, I just copy it from the reference page and paste it into the anchored frame, where I need it. Then I extend and turn it as needed.

Best regards, Winfried

I haven't had the requirement in a decade or so, but when I did, I developed a small library of Reference page objects: arrows, line segments, single- & multiple-digit bubbles, all as Grouped objects including, as back objects, solid-fill slightly oversize masks of color “Mask” (set to white for publication in Color Views).

The bubbles included a blank paragraph, and the number was usually the part's Xref's autonumber from the parts list in the manual appendix, so consistent across the document, and auto-updated.

I wrote this up for the forum, but it was lost in the last forum improvement cycle.

For a tech pub app, FM is surprisingly weak on some common tech pub needs (FrameAbove for captions being another).

I understand your frustration, but there is no built-in mechanism for doing this in FrameMaker. I have built some scripts over the years to do this. For example, you would create a single line and position it on the graphic. After all lines were created and positioned, you would run a script that would add a shadow to each line. It can be complicated to script, but I had clients that wanted it. They were usually white lines offset behind black callout lines to provide relieve against dark parts of images.

image.png

Not having used them, my understanding of FM graphic tools is that they aren't super sophisticated. You'd probably want to use another tool for that and bring the image in as a graphic object.