Seeking inputs on desired features in FrameMaker

I've had one simple desire for almost a decade:

Frame Right/Further Pgf and Frame Left/Closer Pgf

Overview

Currently in Unstructured FM, one can specify a Frame Above Pgf and Below Pgf for a pgf style, calling a Reference Page graphic frame. I would like a Frame Right/Further (from margin) and Left/Closer (to margin) option as well, for placing, e.g., a warning icon to the left of a "Warning" pgf tag, or placing an attention graphic on the outside margin of a "Tips" pgf tag.

Issues Addressed

Currently, one must manually place every such graphic or do something funky with autonumbering and a ding font, which obviously limits what one can do with color, size, and positioning. There is no way to stylistically control (in Unstructured FM) graphic placement to the left/closer-to-margins or right/further-from-margins.

I also suspect that there would have to be an additional setting for the graphic's vertical alignment relative to the pgf (e.g., top-to-top of pgf, bottom-to-bottom of pgf, centered, etc.); but at least the spacing from the pgf is already easily controlled with the graphic frame's sizing, so no additional settings would be required to adjust the gap between the pgf and the graphic.

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Hi Kapil,

Here is the feedback from our team.

1. If you open a chapter file contains cross-reference links and then close it without making any changes, FrameMaker asks if you want to save changes before closing. Since we often multitask with multiple files, this leads to "did I change something?" paranoia when opening a file to check something, getting distracted by other things, then coming back to close it. It would be nice if FrameMaker truly understood whether changes were made to the document or not.

2. I share the frustration of others about the focus behavior when you (attempt to) activate the Find pane with ctrl-F. I expect ctrl-F to place the cursor in the find text box, but instead it highlights whatever the last-used widget was in that window. I've actually made document mistakes that have gone to production because I hit ctrl-F and typed some text and hit return, and what actually happened is that it activated "Find next", then (undetected by me) deleted the newly found and selected text because of my keystrokes.

3. We would like to see spelling and grammar checking highlighted on the screen, as is provided by Microsoft Word. (We are using FM 9, not sure if this is already present in FM 10.) We do have a peer review process set up, but sometimes misspellings slip through.

4. For some of us, FrameMaker crashes often, with no discernable reason. We feel helpless as to how we can take action to improve the stability of FrameMaker, both with crashes as well as unexpected behaviors or bugs. It would be nice to have a customer-friendly way to file bugs that don't go into the proverbial bit bucket. Or, perhaps it already exists and we don't know of it?

I had previously sent this feedback via an email response, but it never got posted to this forum. I am re-replying through a direct forum post.

Thanks!

Hello Kapil. We also appreciate the opportunity to make the following recommendations:

1. PLEASE fix the “not responding error” when updating a larger book or generating a PDF in FM 9 and 10. This was not an issue in V8 or lower. It can take almost 10 minutes to update/print to pdf.
2. Fix the issue with missing font errors and the FM console window opening every time FM is opened.
3. Make tables more user friendly (i.e. easier conversion from text to tables or copying text from a different program into a table).
4. Fix the issue of needing to refocus FM or close and reopen in order to access and select para tags in the status bar at the bottom of the program. Also,  when selecting a para tag, allow the user to continue clicking on the first letter of the para tag, rather than having to use the arrow keys.
5. Simplify the process of creating variables or come up with an easier method altogether.
6. Streamline revisions. Hate to say it but Microsoft Word has it figured out.
7. Simplify the process of upgrading. When using Save All to update all files in a book, do not prompt for each file to convert to a newer version.
8. Make the graphics toolbar more intuitive, similar to Microsoft Word and Publisher. Also, once a graphic/text box is selected, simply use the arrow keys to move an object, rather than Alt+arrow.
9. Reduce the size of the document browsing tabs, only displaying a portion of the document title when several are open. Currently, they flow off the screen.
10. Retain the last few search items in a drop down list in Find/Change.

Thanks,

Lynette Schwend

Computers Unlimited

First, thank you for the opportunity.  These are my feature requests sorted by (personal) priority:

High priority

1. Improved documentation for DITA features in FrameMaker 10 and beyond, including examples, samples, workflow scenarios, and detailed descriptions of DITA options/settings in the product.  The DITA documentation that exists today is not adequate and/or outdated.
2. Support for more content management systems. And although not technically a CMS, I'd love to see integration with Subversion.
3. Macro support.  Ability to record simple, repetitive tasks and save them to a macro or ExtendScript that can be executed on command.  I notice the FDK has hints of keyboard recording, but the functions seem all but dead.

Medium priority

1. Options at the GUI level (not .ini file settings or the like) for controlling the verbosity of console messages and error logs.  Sometimes I find myself wanting to supress error messages, and sometimes I find myself wanting more information than is provided.  I'd like to control that.

Low priority

1. Ability to set show/hide conditions across an entire book in one click, and if some conditions don't exist, create them during the process.  Doing the first part manually, by setting show/hide values in one file and importing the settings back across all the others, is dangerous (authors could bring in unwanted formats) and is time consuming.
2. Files should no longer ask to be saved if no changes are made.  I realize things happen in the background like cross-references are resolving, and that tells FM that something changed, but no...not in my world .

I may have more to add soon, but I wanted to get these out there in case the thread closes.

How about documenting and providing samples for existing features that are more or less unusable due to sketchy or nonexisting documentation or inadquate, outdated, or incomprehensible samples? I'm thinking in particular about ExtendScript and DocBook / DITA XML.

I'd also like a command-line option for specifying an ExtendScript when launching FrameMaker.

I would like to echo the request to expand the table continuation capability. I've worked on several projects over the year where it's necessary to have a "continued on next page" message at the bottom of a page as well as a  "continued from previous page" one at the top of a page. This requirement occurs both inside and outside of tables. For example, for a chapter or section  that spans multiple pages.

Another request is to allow structured tables to contain elements consisting of several rows within a table part or several cells within a row.

M FrameMath doesn't properly format FrameMath objects when different fonts are chosen. Making it format properly for use with any font. Would be good.

L Allow FrameMath to use a unicode Symbol font as well as the traditional symbol font.

H When selected a FrameMath object and choosing Object Properties from the sidebad doesn't yield all of the same properties when choosing Object Properties from the Graphics menu.

H Easier configuring changes to the Frame Math objects.

H Allow creation of more complex FrameMath objects to be created without loosing the number of FrameMath objects presently allowed.

H Increase size of overbar. It is much too small.

H Fix kerning pari of letter f followed by a prime character. Mathematicians writing calculus-based mathematics frequenty use f' for the derivative of a function (read almost always). To have to fix the line spacing for this pair every time it is used is just plain silly.

H When using the Frame Equaton Editor, Frame looses its focus on the equation being edited.

I would like to see enhanced table continuation variable options, along the lines of what Indesign offers. Briefly stated, here is the problem that I need a solution for...

I’m working on a print catalog in Framemaker that is created from a MIF file that is being generated by a database program. There are tables that span multiple columns and I am looking for the best way make the reader aware of this.

Ideally, at the bottom of the first column I would like to have text such as “More” or “Continued” and perhaps a graphic arrow to let the reader know that there are more products in the next column or on the next page. At the top of the table in the following column it would be great if I could display “Continued from...[previous column] or [previous page]” .

I’ve played with the table continuation and table sheet variables and I think that I could insert them into the mif output and dynamically change their value but I am stuck at how to place them where I would like. It appears that I need to place the variable in the table title and I only have the choice of placing the table title at the top OR the bottom of each table.

1. (H-very high!) Direct epub conversion. I was really disappointed

that the epub capability of FM10 required RoboHelp. I read that Adobe

made this choice because epub is for display on screen and RoboHelp is

for developing content for viewing on screen, while FrameMaker is for

producing print. But epub is also a BOOK format! Those of us who create

books for print are finding more and more need to make e-books. I have

no need for the other features in RoboHelp.

2. (H) *Ability to set program-wide default preferences for anchored

frames and runaround.* Bruce Foster's ImpGraph plugin used to do this,

but he passed away and no FM 10 version was ever created. I work with a

lot of graphics and I miss this time-saver.

3. (H) Layers panel. It would be nice to have a way to see the

stacking order of frames and graphics, similar to Photoshop/Illustrator.

The various send-to-front or send-to-back options are clumsy to use and

make it very difficult to select a particular object in a stack. This

would also help in those times when objects are accidentally duplicated

and placed on top of each other.

4. (H) Format list report. This report would list all paragraph and

character format properties in a single table format. It would make it

easy to scan down a table column to find paragraph (or character)

formats that are, for example, using an incorrect font family or

language setting. It would make it easy to see which character formats

were set to a particular font, rather than "As Is," and so forth.

5. (H) "Part" numbering. We have volume, chapter, section, and page

numbering, but part numbering is still missing. A "part" is a group of

chapters. So it would fall between volume and chapter numbering. This

division is common in books.

6. (H) Improved typography.Optical margin alignment, like in InDesign,

would be especially nice.

7. (H) Expanded properties in File Info. One can place custom

properties in a PDF, under the Document Properties> Custom field tab. I

would like to be able to do that from File Info in FrameMaker. New

fields could include ISBN, Publisher, Publisher Address, Email Address,

etc. User-created fields would be even better.

8. (H) Copyright metadata. While there is a "Copyright Status" field

in File Info, it does not populate the "Copyright Status" field in the

"Additional Metadata" section of the PDF. Nor does it populate the

"Copyright Notice" or "Copyright Info URL" fields there. It would be

nice to place this info in File Info and have it flow through to those

fields. Perhaps all metadata should be settable from FrameMaker.

9. (M) Ability tocenter text vertically on a page without putting it

in a table cell.

10. (M) Autonumbering model based on ASCII or Unicode code. There is

already autonumbering capability for numerals, alphabets, and roman

numerals. The new type of autonumber would be useful for those fonts

that have circled-number glyphs in them. I would like to be able to

specify the first ASCII character or first Unicode character that

represents the circled-one glyph, and have autonumbering find the rest

by incrementing the ASCII code or Unicode value.

So, for example, it might work this way: With the Wingdings font, I

could specify \xc0 for the circled number 1, and FM would recognize that

\xc1 would be the next autonumber in the sequence for a circled number

2. Or in ZapfDingbats, u+00c0 would start the autonumbering sequence

with a circled number 1 and FM would know that u+00c1 would increment it

by one.

Mike Wickham

info@mikewickham.com

I echo Peter at knowhowpro:

one important feature enhancement on my list would be starting over with a new code model. Each year that it's deferred, the old code gets more unsuitable for continuing to develop additions, and trying to keep the old model alive wastes resources.

It was stated on one of the FrameMaker forums that Adobe had once planned to extend/develop InDesign to replace FrameMaker. I wish that plan would be resurrected. Then most, if not all, the problems would go away and we would get true color management and better typography. InDesign should be developed so that it can handle XML roundtripping and allow a structured interface.

Regards,

Van