[Closed] FrameMaker 7.x/8 Feature Requests

All of the tech manuals I have done have been using Interleaf and Word. Now the time has come for me to use FrameMaker and I'm having a hard time accepting the convaluted logic behind the design of the workflow process. Foremost is this whole business of opening a lot of windows when working with a book. Currently, I'm working on a tech manual that's made up of 15 chapters. I'm going nuts managing all of these files plus the TOC, List of Figures and List of Tables.

It would help tremendously if a BOOK file generated a file that unifies all 18 of my files as one FrameMaker File. Currently I have to generate a PDF to see my manual in its entirety. The problem with this PDF is that you can't really edit a PDF file. I would like to see a FrameMaker Book File that unifies all of the documents into one MASTER FrameMaker file that one can edit. When all work is done on this file all one needs to do is only close one file instead of closing 18 separate files. Redesigning the workflow in such a way would make working with FrameMaker much more delightful and productive.

If Adobe must ever patch a release again, and I'm sure they will, could they please emulate Microsoft and fix it so that each patch does the whole upgrade including all intermediate patches? I just spent the whole morning reintalling from CD-ROM and downloading and applying two patches.

A refinement. I previously asked for a 'simple hyperlink' method. Much easier would be to have an 'As Is' text option for Cross References. So that you highlight the text that is the source, choose the As Is style of Cross Ref, pick a target and then the link text stays the same and doesn't change according to the target para or anything else. This would save me from messing about with hyperlinks altogether.

I'd really like the ability to total a table column.

Less important but nice would be a "merge" feature. I do correspondence for several organizations and the ability to merge information from a database (or output text file from a database) into Frame would be very helpful.

> Perhaps this approach could be expanded to include the ability to specify a named character style "plus n points" or "minus n points," thus allowing larger or smaller character size variations of a named character style to be specified as that style's Default Font

That's been on my wish list at my Web site for a long time. It would be great for bullets (base size -1 pt or base size + 2 percent).

I, too, would like the option of Word's based-on. Even in Word it is optional. But, failing that, if you have the resource of the maker.ini at your disposal, you can change a font en mass pretty quickly.

The original sub-thread began, I believe, with Mike requesting the ability to quickly update an entire chapter file's (document's?) font selection. As I interpreted it, his suggestion was to have FrameMaker emulate Word's method of deriving one or more "child styles" from a "parent style": Updating the parent style's font would thus update any child style's fonts at the same time

How about this idea: In FrameMaker's Paragraph Designer, in the Default Font drop-down list, add the ability to specify a user-defined character style as the paragraph style's Default Font.

For example, one first uses the Character Designer to define a named character style like BodyText that specifies a font family, size, angle, so on. (I chose BodyText but one could of course also specify "ListText," etc...)

The Paragraph Designer in turn allows any named character style, in this example BodyText, to be selected as any given paragraph's "Default Font." Thus, if the definition for BodyText is changed, any and all paragraphs that specify BodyText as their default font receive the updated BodyText font definition.

Does this make any sense? It does seem to me to address FrameMaker's somewhat clumsy by-the-each updating of multiple paragraph style's fonts without basing entire paragraph styles on Word's equally clumsy (as in overly interlocked) "parent style" technique.

Perhaps this approach could be expanded to include the ability to specify a named character style "plus n points" or "minus n points," thus allowing larger or smaller character size variations of a named character style to be specified as that style's Default Font.

Just thinking...

Cheers & hope this helps,
Riley

Well, it is feature requests, so keep 'em crossed <g>.<br /><br />Another techique for changing fonts in tags quickly, if you have 20 tags and want to change only 90%, then define the two you don't want to change in a blank FM file--call it a template--a simple Copy, Paste, Apply will do it.<br /><br />Then, change your fonts globally in your working document and, as the final act, import only the tags from the template and it will reset that 10% you didn't want to change. This is very quick. And then, if you are forever changing fonts on projects and have fairly fluid designs, you could FrameScript this to make it more automagical.<br /><br />I don't mind the as-an-option stuff, as long as it doesn't slow the app down, make the app more prone to crashes, or significantly increase minimum hardware requirements. (Plus, I sorta like the fact that FrameMaker relies on up-front planning at the expense of on-the-fly reformatting, it keeps me focused on content. <g>)<br /><br />What I really don't want is for putting a file onto another computer and the normal.dot and list-numbering structures sponaneously get overwritten by those on the new hard drive. Etc.<br /><br />Cheers,<br /><br />Sean

Sean said:
> BTW, am not opposed to different ways of
> managing things like tags and fonts, I
> just don't believe doing this in the same
> way Word currently does would be better.

The thing about the way Word does it is that your tags can be standalone if you want them to be. If "TagX" isn't based on anything, you get no surprises when you change some other tag. But if you want to change your "main document font" from Times to Utopia, in Word I change one paragraph tag, and in FrameMaker I have to change a dozen.

I can't see how adding based-on would hurt anything as long as you say "Not based on anything, thankyouverymuch".

Sean, I'm very familiar with Global Update and using As-Is. However, like I said, I only wanted about 90% of my paragraphs, not ALL of them. For example, I want all body text to be serif, while all headings to be sans-serif. I recently changed my body font face and had to do it in about 20 different tags. I would rather say base all body tag fonts on B.Body (or something) so I can change it there only. Similarly, I would like all headings to use the same font, and all code to use the same font. Why should I have to change all them individually or globally only? This is no different than how .css works now; I just want to see it available in the .fm as well.

As for controling cascading changes... I specifically said I wanted it AS AN OPTION, and one that should be applicable on a tag basis. IOW, if you don't want it don't use it.

What I would really like is one place (like a .css) where I can define many common attributes, and then override them for specific tags. Something like subclassing attributes. I probably wouldn't do it for all paragraph attributes; but I would do all basic and default font attributes.

Mike

Bug? In FM7 for Windows, you can't Page Down from one file to another in a book if the Paragraph Designer is open. However, you can Page Up to the next file in the book, or page either way if Character Designer is open. ?!?!