Can I use icons in Building Blocks in FM document?

[Amit Mani30445109n307]

Can I use thumbnail instead of bullets in FM doc?

[Winfried Reng]

Hi,

What do you mean with "thumbnail"?

Do you mean a special character? You can enter any character and apply the correct character format with the correct font.

Or do you want to insert your own small image? Always the same? Or different images for the list items?

You might create your own font with your small images. If you assign these images to the numbers 1 to <high number>, you can use the <n+> building block to change the images.

Most decent graphics applications allow to create your own font files.

Best regards, Winfried

[Amit Mani30445109n307]

yes, I want to insert the image for the list items like this:

[frameexpert]

You cannot add images as part of a paragraph's autonumber format. As Winfried said, you could use a special font that has symbols or pictures, such as Wingdings, but not an image file.

[Amit Mani30445109n307]

Please brief how can I use a special font that has symbols or pictures.

[Bob_Niland]

re: …how can I use a special font that has symbols or pictures.

If any FM dialog accepts arbitrary characters, you should be able to paste in any Unicode BMP character, such as:
☜ U+261C WHITE LEFT POINTING INDEX
either as the copied character, or as, in this example, markup: \u261c

Notes:

• the font needs to populate that codepoint
• ideally, you want to avoid using a Character Format
• specifically, you want to avoid using legacy codepage/overlay dingbat fonts (which would require Character Format) - these reside at codepoints which are Latin1 extensions in Unicode, and may collapse to those without notice
• there are rather a lot of pointing finger glyphs in Unicode; any that are in SMP (above U+FFFF) cannot yet be used in FM (FRMAKER-10976), for example:
  👈 U+1F448 WHITE LEFT POINTING BACKHAND INDEX
  cannot be used in FM today.

[Amit Mani30445109n307]

Thank you Bob, but it's very much technical. I am trying to catch your point. 

[Bob_Niland]

You can just copy the ☜ from any source, such as this reply, and paste it into the autonumber dialog in place of the normal \b bullet. Arbitrary bullet glyphs are actually a lot easier to do in FM than in HTML (and I wonder how they export to HTML from FM).

For use in a bullet format, you might prefer to use a right-pointing hand, such as ☛ or ☞.

Due to the FM:SMP problem, you won't be able use {yet} 👉, 🖙, 🖛 or 🖝.

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

Simply put, you need a character (in this case, a pointing finger) from a font. If your paragraph font doesn't have the pointing finger you want, you'll need to specify a character from another installed font on your system.

If from another font, use that character for the "bullet" (which could be a keyboard character or a unicode character) in your autonumbering properties, and create a character format that specifies that font.
Specify the character format at the bottom of the autonumbering properties.

[Bob_Niland]

Matt: If your paragraph font doesn't have the pointing finger…

When pasted into the AN dialog, as either ☜ or \u261c, FM knows what it is (and is apt to collapse the \u261c to ☜). It's using an internal font for dialogs, that seems to have most of Unicode BMP covered.

If the [☜] becomes a [?] on the Body page, the ¶ font in use does not populate (have outline data for) codepoint U+261C, so another font will be needed.

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

And, following on to Bob's clarification...

When I use FontAwesome bullets (check out fontawesome.com, which is truly awesome for free and paid icons!) I see a "regular" bullet in the Autonumbering Properties. My character format applied to the autonumber, then perfectly renders as an icon in my text and outputs to PDF and online.

[Amit Mani30445109n307]

Hi Bob, I am still confused. Please brief how can I paste in any UNI Code BMP character "U+261C WHITE LEFT POINTING INDEX either as the copied character, or as, in this example, markup: \u261" as you mentioned in your solution. Based on your suggestion what I did is simply copied this ☛ and pasted into Auto Numbering properties, but this turned into "?"

[Bob_Niland]

I presume the "?" is appearing in the document Body text, and not in the /Numbering\ properties dialog.

If so, it means that the font specified for the parapraph format (presumably Bullet) , does not populate (have glyph outlines for) codepoint U+261C. Many fonts don't. Just trying it on my system, Arial, Source Serif and Times New Roman don't. Segoe UI Symbol does.

The usual solution for this is to first create a Character Format that specifies a font that has ☛, and apply it to the /Numbering\ properties of ¶Bulleted.

1. Discover what font(s) on your system populate U+261C. You can use FM's Character Palette for this, but either Window Character Map, or the freebie BabelMap might be easier. If no fonts do, get one.
2. With no text selected that actually uses some other Character Format
     Format 🞃 Character » Character Designer…
3. [⚙🞃] Set Window to As Is
     (you {probably} want this ƒormat to only specify one thing)
4. Family: [Segoe UI Symbol]
     (or other font name as needed)
5. Style: [Pictogram]
     (or other style name meaningful to you)
6. [Create Style]

Now apply that to the bulleted paragraph format:

1. with the cursor in one of your bulleted paras,
     Format 🞃 Paragraph » Paragraph Designer…
2. /Numbering\ tab
3. Check or set Format: [☛\t]
4. Change
     Character Format [Default ¶ Font]
     to
     Character Format [Pictogram]
5. [Update Style]

[Amit Mani30445109n307]

Thank you Bob! I got your point now and this worked.

[Amit Mani30445109n307]

Hi, one issue that pop ups while creating this is the image (☛) is not parallel with paragraph. Please suggest what should I do to make it parallel.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Turn your symbols on so that people can see what you have going on around that symbol & line.

[Bob_Niland]

What is between the ☛ and the \t in the building blocks? It is customary to let the tab settings take care of spacing.

Are there any whitespace characters following the the \t of leading the "There…"
And it may be necessary to also review indents & such in /Basic\

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

You need to adjust the baseline shift. 

[Bob_Niland]

Matt: You need to adjust the baseline shift.
I'm wondering why that would have been changed from the earlier attempt where the substitute ? glyph was correctly positioned. Presumably the only change was the Character Format being applied, but it does appear that more was touched.

[frameexpert]

I suspect that the Character Format has a larger font size than the base Paragraph Format and that is what is causing the vertical spacing issue. This is probably because the poster wants the icon to be larger than the Paragraph Format's font size. The solution may be to set the Line Spacing to Fixed.

[Amit Mani30445109n307]

yes, thanks.

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

While there may be an easier way around this, the only solution I've gotten to work is to create a MIF that defines the baseline shift of the character format, and import it into your document. It only holds until you modify the character format using the Designer.

You can see the writeup of the exact steps (Creating a character tag for a vertical baseline shift) on p.492 of FrameMaker - Working with Content (Fm 2020 edition)

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

I created a 15-minute lesson on setting up icons like this in my online FrameMaker Template Design course...if you'd like access to either the lesson or the course, click on my name/picture and send me a direct message.

-Matt

[Amit Mani30445109n307]

Alright Matt, thank you.