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4everJang
4everJang
Legend
June 10, 2014
Question

How to prevent FrameMaker eating up significant whitespace

  • June 10, 2014
  • 1 reply
  • 687 views

I have a paragraph that contains a number of inline elements, such as a <link> and a <uicontrol>. When these are only separated by a whitespace (which is significant in this case, as it separates the characters in the <link> from the characters in the <uicontrol>, the XML file produced by FM has replaced the whitespace with a carriage return, which of course disappears as it is supposed to be meaningless in XML.

I have tried to set the "preserve line breaks" rule on the enclosing <p> element but, apart from the fact that this is not what I intend to do, it does not make any difference on the whitespace between the two inline elements.

Is there any way to make FM not perform this obvious mistake? Or do I really have to use ExtendScript to first change the whitespace to a special <whitespace> character, so that this is kept in the XML output and can then be changed back into a regular whitespace by my XSLT (which I need in any case). Kind of ugly but it would work. If there is an easier way to do this, please tell me about it.

Ciao

Jang

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1 reply

ScottPrentice
ScottPrentice
Inspiring
June 10, 2014

Hi Jang...

What FM version are you using? If FM11 or 12, are you using XML view (in FM11, that caused whitespace problems)?

You might try changing the setting of RemoveExtraWhiteSpacesOnXMLImport in maker.ini (if it's On turn it Off, if Off, turn it On).

Rather than use the "preserve line breaks" rule, if you set the "writer line break" rule on the enclosing <p> that should "fix" the problem ..

     writer line break is 99999 characters;

FM should not be stripping CRs, but "normalizing" them with the other surrounding whitespace characters. A CR should be treated like any other whitespace (space or tab), which would collapse it into a single space. FM12 should be doing this correctly. FM11 had some lingering issues in this regard. In all cases, make sure you've got the latest FM patch installed.

Just out of curiosity .. have you tried this with DITA-FMx? It *should* work properly there. If it doesn't please send me a sample file.

Cheers,

…scott

4everJang
4everJangAuthor
Legend
June 10, 2014

Hi Scott,

I am using FM12 and no DITA-FMx, as the materials are not DITA at all. I have found a solution, as the CR in the produced XML is treated as a whitespace when I tell the XSLT to preserve whitespace on the <p> elements. It just seems a little odd that a whitespace is changed into a CR, which normally has no meaning in XML.

Ciao

Jang

ScottPrentice
ScottPrentice
Inspiring
June 10, 2014

Hi Jang...

Frame wraps the XML after some number of characters (not sure what the default is). You can use the writer line break rule to specify a different number of characters to wrap after. Using a very large number means that it won't wrap (under normal conditions). This is not a DITA-FMx feature .. default FM.

Changing a space into a CR shouldn't be a problem in XML since it should be treated just like any other whitespace (CR is whitespace just like tab and space). What's bad is that FM isn't apparently interpreting this CR properly. It should be adding a space not deleting it.

Cheers,

…scott

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