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lief_erickson1
Participating Frequently
October 2, 2012
Answered

Need a space after </keyword>

  • October 2, 2012
  • 1 reply
  • 1461 views

FrameMaker 11

DITA 1.2

I am having problems with keyword references. It was the same problem I was having with my FrameMaker variables, which I have abondoned in favor of a "cleaner," pure DITA solution. When I insert a conkeyref like in the the shortdesc everything appears fine.

<shortdesc>You can grow the size of your <keyword  conkeyref = "keywords/prodcut_name"></keyword> by adding additional drive units if you are running low on disk space. </shortdesc>

After I save the file, close it and reopen it, the space after </keyword> is removed so that it reads </keyword>by. What is causing this? I can't simply add a space to my product_name definition because there are times when I need punctuation after the it.  I suspect has to do with how FrameMaker processes the conkeyrefs because when I manually put spaces after all of the conkeyrefs and then choose DITA > Update References FrameMaker will go through my document and update all conkeyrefs and remove the trailing space. Where is this behavior set or defined?

-Lief

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

Hi Lief,

Thanks so much for this post. It reminded me about something that was introduced in FM10 that IMHO is a terrible bug and caused me hours of trouble to restore the damage it did. And, I was never able to fully track down all the damage, so to this day I still find problems that it caused.

Anyway, while your post helped me a lot because it inspired me to check my FM11 installation, I don't know if my answer will help you   But it is worth a try.

In your maker.ini file, by default there is the following setting:

RemoveExtraWhiteSpacesOnXMLImport=On

This is an abhorrent setting that aggressively removes whitespace in various situations, some of which sound like the case you describe. Try turning it off and see what happens. To be sure, turn it off in both copies of maker.ini... the copy in your installation directory and your user profile area (Documents and Settings > etc.)

Checking my FM11 installation, I see the setting is still turned on by default. I'm ranting here, but for the life of me, I can't fathom how a desktop publisher is being released with a setting that involuntarily alters your source files. I also don't understand why anyone producing literary content would desire this sort of whitespace normalization. I was told to submit a bug report back with FM10, but I never got around to it thinking surely that this mistake would be caught and fixed. I'm heading to the bug report area now.

Russ

1 reply

R
Russ WardCorrect answer
Legend
October 3, 2012

Hi Lief,

Thanks so much for this post. It reminded me about something that was introduced in FM10 that IMHO is a terrible bug and caused me hours of trouble to restore the damage it did. And, I was never able to fully track down all the damage, so to this day I still find problems that it caused.

Anyway, while your post helped me a lot because it inspired me to check my FM11 installation, I don't know if my answer will help you   But it is worth a try.

In your maker.ini file, by default there is the following setting:

RemoveExtraWhiteSpacesOnXMLImport=On

This is an abhorrent setting that aggressively removes whitespace in various situations, some of which sound like the case you describe. Try turning it off and see what happens. To be sure, turn it off in both copies of maker.ini... the copy in your installation directory and your user profile area (Documents and Settings > etc.)

Checking my FM11 installation, I see the setting is still turned on by default. I'm ranting here, but for the life of me, I can't fathom how a desktop publisher is being released with a setting that involuntarily alters your source files. I also don't understand why anyone producing literary content would desire this sort of whitespace normalization. I was told to submit a bug report back with FM10, but I never got around to it thinking surely that this mistake would be caught and fixed. I'm heading to the bug report area now.

Russ

L
lief_erickson1Author
Participating Frequently
October 3, 2012

Hi Russ--

Thank you so much. That was exactly the issue. You deserve eleventy billion bonus points.

-Lief

L
lief_erickson1Author
Participating Frequently
October 3, 2012

Well, it solves one issue and introduces another...<WHITESPACE>. In many ways, this is a more annoying problem to look at while authoring, but is more easily solved come production time.

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