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Eric5F88
Inspiring
November 26, 2022
Question

EDD update, hidden conditional text and paragraph orphan lines: wrong behaviour ?

  • November 26, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 850 views

Hello,

 

Note: somehow switching computer solved the forum's "wrong html" issue so I updated this post to have the images directly here....

 

I have encountered an odd behaviour in the following situation:

  • Document is structured
  • Page layout is 2 columns (scientific type)
  • Some conditional text that hidden within text paragraphs
  • "Body" element paragraph design states that allowed orphan lines number is 6

         

  • EDD for graphic object option allows for 1 clumn wide captions and 2 column wide caption, depending on attribute value as follows:

         

 

When switching from one conditional-based document to the other I apply the following script, in that particular order:

  • Show/Hide conditional text
  • Update template with the following settings

         

  • Import variables from an external .fm file with following settings

         

  • Update book
  • Update EDD with following settings

         

 

Problem is, in some specific situation, it seems that the orphan lines setting is messed up when some text is hidden by conditional show/hide settings. Here is an example of this happening (had to blur text for confidentiality reasons)

 

The text surrounded the red rectangle, section 7.7.5, is a paragraph that is supposed to be placed after the paragraph on the end of the right column (after 7.7.4), not to be split across both columns like that, which doesn't make sense in terms of text flow anyways.

 

Also the two orphan lines after the 7.7.5 title shouldn't be allowed by the paragraph design.

 

IMHO what happens is that the EDD has somehow messed up the paragraph design 6 orphan lines setting. In section 7.7.5 there is a significant part of the text that is hidden by conditional settings, so I thought this may be related.

 

A solution that I was able to find was to add a step right after the EDD import, that is to re-import the template but with only paragraph formats like this:

 

While this solves the orphan lines problem, it messes the figure caption, that is set to be "In Column" by the EDD attribute-dependent condition (see EDD extract above). Now the paragraph format import has overridden the EDD condition and the caption is set accross all columns, leading to the following result, surrounded by red rectangle:

 

The 7.7.5 part has been pushed to the next page as expected, which is good, but we lost the caption format.

 

Is it a bug of Framemaker, that doesn't consider correctly the paragraph formating when updating the EDD, or is there something that I could do to solve this issue ?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Best regards

 

Eric

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    Matt-Tech Comm Tools
    Community Expert
    Matt-Tech Comm ToolsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 26, 2022

    It sounds like you have a hybrid environment that relies on unstructured variables and formatting rules. Have you tried defining the variables and paragraph formatting in the EDD and or structured application instead?

    -Matt

    -Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant
    E
    Eric5F88Author
    Inspiring
    November 27, 2022

    Hello Matt,

     

    Thanks a lot for your answer !

     

    This is our Framemaker-related file system:

    • Content is in structured .fm documents. Those contain the content for all document variant, with a conditional tag for each variant to show/hide text.
    • Variables for each variant of the document in a dedicated .fm document
    • Formating in a dedicated "template" .fm file. This file is common for all company document.
    • EDD in a dedicated .fm structured file. This file is common for all company document.

    Link between formats and EDD is made by EDD linking to named character/paragraph formats.

     

    This is a way we found to be working for us but we are still open for better ways to work.

    • Do you think that it would be better to store every paragraph/character format settings in the EDD file ? So every single formatting parameter would be specified in the EDD, or is there an easier (and less exhaustive...) way to do it ?
    • How should we handle the variables ? How do you store them, and their definitions that differ per variant, in the EDD ?

     

    Thanks in advance.

     

    Best regards

     

    Eric

    E
    Eric5F88Author
    Inspiring
    November 28, 2022

    Hello,

     

    I tried something to try to force the orphan lines from the EDD by adding the following "all context rules" to the "para" element, but I still get the same result

    So I am still looking for a solution 😉

     

    Any help would be apreciated !

     

    Thanks in advance

     

    Best regards

     

    Eric

     
    E
    Eric5F88Author
    Inspiring
    November 26, 2022

    (removed pdf because I was finally able to add images in the original post)

     
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