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Wanda Jane
Wanda Jane
Inspiring
June 23, 2022
Question

Can I edit the EDD to add a new symbol to uicontrol element (replacing the > character)

  • June 23, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 248 views

FrameMaker 2020 (16.0.4) + DITA 1.3 + EDD

My client likes using a specific symbol in the menucascade elements. The definition is in the uicontrol element. Working in the EDD, I cannot make the symbol work. I suspect now that the symbol is not in the font used in the book, so I'd have to somehow indicate that the symbol font needs to be included in the document.

I've tried pasting from the Windows Character Map as text, rich text, and unicode. When that didn't work, I created a variable with the character code (U+0AE) but that didn't work either.

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1 reply

Bob_Niland
Community Expert
Bob_NilandCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 23, 2022

U+00AE is ®

The usual Greater Than sign (>) is U+003E.

Unicode contains a rather large number of grapheme mimics for this, usually with formal names including Greater Than, Angle Quote or Angle Bracket.
When using any in FM, in addition to the usual font support issue, don't {yet} try any with a code point above U+FFFF.

U+003E is worth avoiding in anything that might end as HTML or XML. Too many web engines try to protect you, and convert it to >
Worse, if there's an isolated < earlier in the document, one site I contribute to has an engine that sees the whole < … > sequence as invalid HTML, and just deletes it.
That site also uses a ParentPage > ChildPage notation. I routinely safe that to
ParentPage » ChildPage

Insofar as the EDD workflow; sorry, no insights.

Wanda Jane
Wanda JaneAuthor
Inspiring
June 23, 2022

Thanks, Bob,

I got the character code from Windows Character Map as the Insert > Character options don't work for me (they close before I can select a character). My client wants to use a character that Windows identifies as Ux0AE. Clearly, that is the registered mark. I've left the definition with the greater than sign, for now.

Bob_Niland
Community Expert
Bob_NilandCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 23, 2022

Both Windows CM & FM CP are problematic.

For copy&paste, I use Bablemap.
And for anything not on keyboard, I use variables, as shown in that linked thread.
I have no idea what your client is seeking with the xAE confusion.
[»] U+00BB RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK
is nice because it's a legacy Roman extension character supported pretty much universally. It's also XHTML 1.0 &raquo; in case anything in the workflow is mapping code points to named Entities.

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