Inspiring

Question

List of appearances of a word?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
April 19, 2023
5 replies
1271 views

Hi,

Is there a way of getting from FM (or PDF) a detailed list of the appearances of a word?

By detailed, I mean ideally including page number, line number, and some context.

The background for this question is that I have a standards document of 50+ files, totaling about 1350 pages.

I am required to locate all occurrences of the word "must" and recommend whether and how to change them, usually, but not always, to "shall".

I need to make a list of all occurrences of the word, so that they can be reviewed by the standards committee in charge of the document.

I thought of making an Excel file, but wanted to know whether there was a way to speed up the process.

I am using unstructured FM 13 (2015).

Thanks,

Shalom

This topic has been closed for replies.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi Shalom:

I just tried it and it worked as described.

Created a custom marker called ListPress. Added marker to word, copied word with marker, used F/C to replace all occurences of word by pasting.

Generated a list of markers, using ListPress.

Resulting list (unformatted) with h-links

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

S

shalomb61686619Author

Inspiring

Thanks.

But I am using an older FM version.

And it is certainly possible I did something wrong.

Anyway, I started creating my Excel manually and found that it goes reasonably fast.

In my case, I have 190 appearances, and I have already done a quarter of them.

Regards,

Shalom

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi Shalom:

The other difference in this workflow is that I use the Insert menu to insert a list of markers, and you will need to use the Special menu on 2015. Everything else is the same.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Rick is the one who can help you accomplish tasks quickly that are beyond the feature set of FrameMaker.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi Shalom:

Is there a way of getting from FM (or PDF) a detailed list of the appearances of a word? By detailed, I mean ideally including page number, line number, and some context.

Note quite what you want but perhaps worth noting that Acrobat offers us both Edit > Find and Edit > Advanced Search. Advanced search offers context which I find invaluable when searching technical documents.

And to expand on @Winfried Reng's idea:

Edit > Find/Change > Find: must, stop with the first occurence selected
Special > Marker, add a custom marker (i.e., Must) and assign it to the selected text.
Copy the word must with the marker to the clipboard
Edit > Find/Change
- Find: must
- Change by pasting to add the marker in front of each occurence of must
Not sure the next step in 2015:
- In current versions, we can open View > Panels > Markers and just click each ocurrence in the list to hyperlink to it, but not sure when that feature was first introduced. I'm guessing 2017 but not sure.
- In any version, create a list of markers (in chronological order) with their page numbers and hyperlink from there.
Once the job in complete, remove all of the Markers of Type Must with a Find/Change.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

S

shalomb61686619Author

Inspiring

Thanks for the additional information about the markers idea. I will look at it next week. As for the PDF search, I previously related to that. Yes, it gives context, and links, but not location.

To clarify, I understand that I may be asking for a lot, but ideally I would like to make a file of all these occurrences which can be filled out with change/no change recommendations and reviewed by the standards committee. We probably want to split up the recommendation process among several people, as there are a total of about 190 occurrences in our document.

S

shalomb61686619Author

Inspiring

Hi,, Winfried and Barb.

I tried the Marker idea. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to create the markers, but I was able to do it.

Unfortunately, when I tried to create a List of Markers at the book level. it only allowed me to choose standard market names and not the custom marker name I chose.

Ooh, I am stupid.

I just realized while writing this: if that is the situation, then I should try using a standard marker name...

frameexpert

Community Expert

I wrote a script several years ago for my own use, but never released it for sale. Its "Find All" command presents you with this dialog box:

The results on the document or book are presented in a hyperlinked view of all of the text that it finds:

If you are interested in obtaining the script, please contact me offlist. rick at frameexpert dot com

S

shalomb61686619Author

Inspiring

Thanks. It's not quite what I am looking for.

frameexpert

Community Expert

Do you have any suggestions for making it better? I could see where page numbers would be useful.

W

Winfried Reng

Community Expert

Hi Shalom,

In FrameMaker you can create a list or index of markers formats, which you can use here.

Search for all occurrences of your word and always create a marker of a special type. When the word is found and selected, it is already in the marker pod. (Both pods need to be be open.) You only have to click Create. (This should not take too long, even for 1350 pages.) Then create a list of markers of this type, and that's what you want, isn't it?

Of course you can automate this with ExtendScript.

Or create a PDF and in Acrobat open the Advanced Search in the Edit menu. Then enter your word and you get your list. Very easy. No changes in FrameMaker needed.

If you need more help, let me know.

Best regards, Winfried

S

shalomb61686619Author

Inspiring

Thank you for the idea.

I am not familiar enough with markers. I will look at it.

Regarding the PDF idea, the Advanced Search (in the version that I have) gives me context and a link, but not a location.

I had the idea of creating a special version of the document with globally changing "must" to "mast", for example, and then performing Document Compare within Acrobat. I think the Summary version of the comparison gives page numbers and maybe line numbers and links as well.

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