[Closed] FrameMaker 7.x/8 Feature Requests

Horace: Frame already does that (right recto, left verso) unless told otherwise.

What aren't you seeing currently then?

Bill,

I agree that its good for me to control what goes where, but I would like the default to agree with standard publication practice.

Sorry Horace, I disagree. What page is used where should be controllable by the author, not the software by default.

Folks,

I just read through the whole list and didn't find this one, so here goes.

When set for double-sided printing, could FrameMaker please start with a right template (for odd page numbers), then a left for the reverso pages? You know, like books do?

I'm forced to admit that the functionality I want would probably best be provided by a third-party add-on tool rather than in FrameMaker itself. Once I've transformed the "bad old" template elements into "good new" ones, I shouldn't need to keep doing cleanup or transformation.

Having said that, I'm delighted to see how many third-party FrameMaker extensions are out there, albeit extensions of widely varying quality and utility. This alone encourages me (Lord, I hope not naively) to believe that FrameMaker will continue to be a useful tool for some time to come.

That helps, but it'd still be good to know what incorrect xrefs exist with regard to a new template. For example, an old file uses an xref named PonP and is used in the document to mark paratext on page. A new template is then applied where PonP is replaced by another xref named ParatextOnPage. It'd be great to see PonP be listed as *PonP.

Anyhoo... back to dreamland...

In case anyone needs this: You can clean unused variables and unused cross-refs easily (but not book wide). Just open their lists, and delete everything. When you leave the dialog box, you'll get a warning if you want to convert such-and-such to plain text. Click Cancel ... all the unused ones will be gone, and all the used will remain.

Thanks Arnis, but this doesn't fix the issue of old used variables in-use being automatically incorporated into the file updated with a new tempalte (when copying an old file into a new empty file). They should be treated like paragraphs and characters - no inclusion in the style lists and an asterisk identifier.

Ideally there should be a mapping dialog. "We're sorry, but your file uses formats that differ from the target template. Please map them to valid formats."

I can dream, can't I? ;-)

Any variable, cross-reference, and other non para/char styles will remain in the files unless they are specifically deleted prior to importing the new template. I'm going through all this now with my team as we move to new templates. It *would* be nice to have an easy way to strip all these out of all files in a book.

Also of note, whether you are importing a template or importing the contents of one FM file into a new file based on the new template, if you have any xrefs or variables in the old that don't exist in the new, they will not only remain in the body and master pages once in the new template, but will exist in the varibale/xref lists of the new "clean" file WITHOUT an asterisk indicator. That is, they make themselves at home in the new files as if they belong there.