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R
Russ Ward
Legend
July 14, 2015
Answered

How to use Chinese characters as autonumbers, variables, etc.

  • July 14, 2015
  • 2 replies
  • 945 views

Hi,

(FM2015, Win 7)

I'd like to use Chinese characters in several dialog boxes, such as the following as a static autonumber for note paragraphs:

注

I'd also like to use these characters in variables, cross-reference formats, etc. The dialog boxes accept the characters but the document text just shows question marks. I don't know enough about these character sets to make it work. Can anybody help out an Asian character noob here?

Thanks,

Russ

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Russ Ward

    OK, well I happened to figure it out, thanks to some clues in an old thread:

    Chinese fonts in FrameMaker 9

    To make it work, I created a character format that uses the MingLiU font, then used it as a building block in the autonumbers, variable definitions, etc. Like magic, the Chinese characters that I pasted into the dialog boxes now appear correctly in the document.

    I am happy that it is working, but I do wish that I understood why.

    Thanks to all who weighed in.

    Russ

    2 replies

    R
    Russ WardAuthorCorrect answer
    Legend
    July 17, 2015

    OK, well I happened to figure it out, thanks to some clues in an old thread:

    Chinese fonts in FrameMaker 9

    To make it work, I created a character format that uses the MingLiU font, then used it as a building block in the autonumbers, variable definitions, etc. Like magic, the Chinese characters that I pasted into the dialog boxes now appear correctly in the document.

    I am happy that it is working, but I do wish that I understood why.

    Thanks to all who weighed in.

    Russ

    Bob_Niland
    Community Expert
    Bob_NilandCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 15, 2015

    Unless FM has been enhanced in later versions, the autonumbering is pretty inflexible. It wants to do only one of 5 things (this is based on observed FM7 behavior):

    • a+/A+: a-z or A-Z, rolling over to aa or AA, etc.
      (whether this is exclusively Latin, or might follow your localization is not known to me)
    • n+: decimal counting from any arbitrary non-negative starting value over the range 0-65536
      (attempting negative immediately increments to the twos complement of that)
    • r+/R+: 0-Roman numeral counting starting at any arbitrary non-negative value over the range 0-MMMMMMMMMCMXCIX (9999 decimal)

    If you attempt to use an arbitrary Unicode character as the starting value for an 'a' or 'A' sequence, I would expect it to immediately roll over to the Latin (local?) character sequence for the decimal equivalent of that.

    What's needed is a new U+ counter, or better yet, arbitrary sequences defined by you, much like the Custom option for Table Footnotes.

    R
    Russ WardAuthor
    Legend
    July 15, 2015

    Bob, thanks for the reply. I'm not really talking about numbering, though, just text really. I also want to put these characters in variables, cross-reference formats, etc. If I can enter them as document text, shouldn't I be able to use them in these gizmos? It seems I shouldn't be the first to encounter this issue, but who knows how much Chinese is published with FM. Multibyte characters like UTF8 work fine but I guess there is something different about these(?). I just don't know anything about how the encoding might work.

    Russ

    Bob_Niland
    Community Expert
    Bob_NilandCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 15, 2015

    re: Multibyte characters like UTF8 work fine ...

    UTF8 would be Unicode, which I take it the document is not using.

    Anyone who can help may want to know what font and encoding the document uses. Encodings might include GB18030, Big5, and of course Unicode. I know how to enter Unicode in dialogs (as do you). I have no clue what the story is with the other encodings, which may use between 1 and 4 bytes for various characters, and may be treated as overlay/codepage fonts when used.

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