[Closed] FrameMaker 7.x/8 Feature Requests

Free coffee with every 'update book' operation. ;-)

Some thoughts:<br /><br />You can do a border above and below by using "Frame Above Pgf" and Frame "Below Pgf" combined with a reference-page graphic.<br /><br />Do you find shading a long paragraph that splits pages enhances readability? For a short note, such as in a table, I can see where shading might call attention to the text. But over the long haul, I would expect shading the background of a paragraph reduces readability. Does feathering or balancing columns accomplish what you need?<br /><br />I think the flexibility of table cells that split pages might be good to have, but I dislike splitting table cells across tables, personally.<br /><br />I'm not sure what you are doing with flows, but I agree using different flows could be made more useful, predictable, and reliable than it is now. Sounds like you are looking for some sort of complex content auto-arrangement, though.<br /><br />There are things I like about how FrameMaker handles typography and things I hate. FrameMaker certainly is not sophisticated in this regard. But, FrameMaker is suited for long technical documents and reducing authoring time and editing and revision time by using repeating, somewhat fixed approach, versus an ad-hoc customization on many pages approach. (I don't like using manual page breaks nor soft returns, either. <g>) Perhaps InDesign has some of the features you need? I do like how FrameMaker tells me when I use a font I don't have installed, but I dislike how the FrameMaker GUI doesn't give me access to fix all such problems.<br /><br />You can set the space before a paragraph using an indent. The space between is changed with Space: Above Pgf and Space: Below Pgf. I don't like the indent to change (I don't think ragged left helps readability) and I don't care much for the space between paragraphs to change, either, because when I read I get used to a regularly (and reasonably) sized space between paras. Can you use FrameMaker's <br /><br />Not sure about your hyphenation issues, but have you tried customizing your dictionary file? It's not the easiest thing to get into, but it is documented.<br /><br />Use of meta styles seems like a decent idea; I'd not benefit because my styles seldom change. Are you changing your styles a lot such that importing re-defined styles from a designated template file doesn't work well for you?<br /><br />Hopefully there are some ideas here that can help you out if you've not tried them already. I wholeheartedly agree that FrameMaker is showing its age and has been for some time now.<br /><br />Cheers,<br /><br />Sean

- Border for paragraphs, "à la Word", that is border that can be differentiated as above, below, right, left and between. When several paragraphs of the same type follow each other, only the first have border above and only the last has border below.

- Shading for normal paragraphs. (Unlike paragraphs in tables, paragraphs belongs to the main text flow and the can be split between pages.

- Table cells that split between pages.

- Several different flows for floating object. That way, a small table can belong to flow A and a large table to flow B. If the small table appears after the big one, and there is room for the small one at the bottom of the page and not for the big one, the small table should be put in that space and so appear before the big one. This is needed because tables may be used for many different things such as boxed text, figures and true tables, and there might be no need that there order be maintained.

- Better typography (or even MUCH BETTER typography)

- Adjustable space before and after elements like paragraphs : a space before should be specified, for example as 3pt (ideal), 2pt (minimum), and 5pt (maximum) to achieve better vertical justification.

- Words containing a hard space should hyphenate. In some language, punctuation are preceded by a (hard) space. FrameMaker never hyphenate such words.

- Words that are wider than the justification should hyphenate. (They don't and I call this a bug.)

- Use of meta-styles for characters and paragraphs. Regular styles should heritate from those meta-styles, so we could change a complete style sheet by only wswitching meta-styles.

... as long as it's the _last_ action you want to repeat <g> So add that by all means, but don't let anyone take away or re-map the more fine-grained repeat commands.

The para./char. formatting repeat tips are great - thanks Arnis. But I'm with Larry on the repeat last command. Not to bring out the Word-snipers, but in Word, you can press Ctrl+Y and get a repeat of nearly <any> action, from resizing a table cell to repeating a style application, repeating text entry, applying border or shading, adding or deleting something... it's <one> command. It's fast and it's great. <br /><br />--Gloria Mc

A "repeat last action" sort of command/button, similar to the function of Word's F4 key, without the need to purchase or write a plug-in.

A "split table" feature (without nedding to buy or write a plug-in).

Make it possible for paragraph styles to repeat at the top of a page, and remove the limitation on the Table Continuation variable that means you can only use it in tables.

We want to put labels in the sidebar and have them repeat at the top of a page and say "continued". This may not be the only way for FM to achieve this functionality, but it's a way that occurred to me.

Cheers, Rebecca

I find it too cumbersome to keep opening and closing windows to keep the screen free of clutter. Paragraph, Font and Table Designer are examples of windows that always seem to be in the way, even with a 21" monitor. I have the same complaint about Illustrator, but at least there's a simple workaround in Illustrator to partially solve the problem.

Why not allow a "double-click" in the blue bar at the top of these windows to "roll-up" the window, leaving just the blue bar showing. The work flow would be much better if this simple feature was added. Illustrator does it..why not FrameMaker?

I herein wish to petition my grievances with the equation editor.

I would like equations from Framemaker to look better. If FM-produced equations can approach the aesthetic excellence of LATEX-produced equations, then I would see no other reason whatsoever for me to consider using LATEX or anything other than FM!!!

Some of the few issues with equations:

1) Shrinkwrapping equation frames. Try this for example: create a new medium equation and just type in the letter "f". Shrinkwrap the equation. You will see that the tail of the letter "f" is chopped off. What happened? Believe it or not, this is common. This chopping-off happens sometimes on the top-bottom as well.

2) Allow the option to shrinkwrap ALL equations (or maybe all highlighted equations) in a document. This used to be possible with earlier versions of FM, and it was very useful.

3) Operators such as integrals and summations and their limits or indices look very clunky. I very often have to microposition limits and indices to make them look good. Look at an equation with integrals and summations generated with LATEX, and you will notice the difference. [I am really not trying to make a general comparison between FM and LATEX. I consider the earlier better in all respects except equations. But since LATEX is considered the paradigm by mathematicians, physicists, or anyone who has a lot of equations in their documents, I think its not a bad idea to look at that for inspiration when improving the equation editor in FM].

4) Diacritical marks. Try this: create a new medium equation and type in the capital Greek delta. Then put an overbar on it. Why on earth is the overbar so far away from the Delta? Please bring it closer.

5) More simple alignment problems. Try typing x squared in an equation. There are 2 ways to do this. a) start a medium equation, type in x, then click the appropriate button from OPERATORS in the equation palette. b) type x SHIFT+6 2. These 2 different ways produce 2 different x-squares. Neither of the 2 however looks right. The superscripted 2 in the first case is too high and in the second case too low. Something between the two would be ideal. Again I have to use micropositioning to get it right.

6) Please do something about bold and italic Greek letters in equations. This is a terrible deficiency. The default Symbol postscript font doesnt have bold and italic, but bold and italic Greek letters are VERY common in the technical literature. Bold letters are to symbolize vectors, matrices, and tensors. Greek letters (just like Latin letters) should be italicized if they represent a scalar variable.

7) Include more operators, symbols, delimeters . LATEX and the Math Type editor have a vast array of options not available in the FM editor.

8) When having multi-line equations, please add features for line breaking and aligning the equations.

To ensure satisfactory results, I would suggest that the task of improving the equation editor be assigned (or at least overseen) to someone who actually knows or has had experience with technical publications rich with equations.