[Closed] FrameMaker 7.x/8 Feature Requests

Support for relative units, e.g. em, ex would be useful for defining indents, tabs and so on. Ideally these should be recalculated whenever the base paragraph font size changes and not fixed at the time the definition is initially made.

Jon

Right. Mea Culpa.

Cheers,

Sean

Having read the back and forth for the last couple of days, let me comment that I *think* (I could be wrong, if so please correct me!) that the main purpose of this particular sub-list is for people to post REQUESTs of new features, rather than DISCUSS their relative merits back and forth. I really think that should go on the main list.

Thanks :)

K

Oh, and apologies ... here I was, thinking of the best way to go about doing certain things *with the current product* and this being a *feature requests* thread.

Yes, more flexibility with regards to layout would be great! What FrameMaker has is old -- it's gotten us this far but needs reworking.

So, let me add my wish that Flows are made more useful and usable in upcoming releases!

Cheers,

Sean

> 'Tis the season to be silly.

Tra-la-la-la-la la la la la.

'Tis the season to be silly. <g><br /><br />I see what you are saying. Previously, I thought you were suggesting that words and paragraphs on a shaded background were easier to read than words and paragraphs on a white background. I believe shading hinders the readability of the content that sits on the shading, especially for longer passages.<br /><br />I agree that shading helps grab your attention and is extremely helpful in sorting different content threads.<br /><br />I agree font choice is important, and often overlooked. Though, with a typical 4-to-6 inch text column, 24 points probably hinders readability except in short headings. <vBg><br /><br />As I suggested, I think for short paragraphs, like notes and tips, shading would work. In my opinion, this technique would work best in FrameMaker because note tables, and such, work well in the text flow.<br /><br />As you suggest, using ad-hoc text frames with shading can work (and you can apply borders) but my thoughts on that are to consider the extra effort required not just to implement those but to maintain them over time. (I've worked a fair bit with this technique -- hafta admit, it felt more natural in both Ventura and PageMaker than in FrameMaker). I think, perhaps, making font choices to aid readability is easier to implement and more robust in the FrameMaker application.<br /><br />I think the best way forward would be for Adobe to rework text flows so that multiple flows are easier to use and maintain in a document.<br /><br />Cheers,<br /><br />Sean

Sounds fair enough. I've not seen the background shading of text you mention, I'll double check. I wonder why we don't shade the backgrounds of every paragraph on every page if it enhances readability? Think it's an expense thing, more ink/toner and that sort of thing?

Instead, I propose that the shaded background works to draw your attention to particular text but does not actually make the text more readable. (I would argue that it makes the text less readable.) I further propose that shading the background of a paragraph works well for short paragraphs but as the shaded-background text gets longer, the diminished readability lessens the payoff of the attention-grabbing shading, such that the technique works best for notes, tips, and the like.

You can create and manually maintain separate text boxes with a shaded background; miss one and your pagination gets hosed, though.

In other words, yes, you can do that. Consider the cost:benefit ratio. The benefits are it draws your eye to a particular piece of text (unless you're shading the background of all the text), the drawbacks are it's more difficult to implement, more tricky to maintain, and introduces a potential error in that if you miss one when updating your content, it'll make a mess.

Cheers,

Sean

Hi,

Yes, there's no perfect software tool, eh?

Does the creating reversed type info on Tim Murray's site help? http://www.techknowledgecorp.com/

As for telling people how to do without what they ask:

1) Manage expectations.
a) Not all tools do all things.
b) Work costs money, time, and resources. For some kinds of work, the payoff is not worth it; often this is especially true when you consider the upkeep of a "special."
2) Offer your professional advice. Consider what you know, have learned, observed, and experienced as a professional communicator, such as sometimes a shaded background can hinder communication. Or, that tables can hinder communication if used by people using screen readers. Etc.

However, I mostly agree with you. There are certainly some features that would offer flexibility in which the FrameMaker team should invest, and there are long-standing bugs that Adobe really needs to fix ....

Cheers,

Sean

I forgot the most important improvment I would need in FrameMaker : It should NEVER crash when opening a MIF file, whatever it might contain. It should just report (usefull) information about the bad content.

[Do you find shading a long paragraph that splits pages enhances readability?]

Sean, this is typically "Tell us what you need and we'll tell you how to do without it". The point is not to decide if shadiung text increase or decrease readability. I need it, because I am asked to use it ! I use tables for this, but table paragraphs don't split between pages, and such tables interfere with "true" floating tables. (Table used for shading should not float.)

Regarding typography, InDesign is much better, but it lacks the most important : the (documented) MIF format !

Regarding hyphenation, this is clearly a bug, as reported by the technical support staffsinc version 6 (or is it 5.5 ?:-(

Anyway, thanks for your comments ! (And tehre are many things I really love in FrameMaker !)