Caption with graphic keeps going to next page, for no discernable reason.

[Susan305351693t3o]

I have had this problem several times, and the only way I've been able to solve it is in the Ancored Frame menu:

and selecting "page."

So here is a graphic with no caption on page 28, because for no reason, the caption has jumped to the next page. I've tried shrinking the graphic to the size of a pea, and there is PLENTY of space on the page for the caption, but it STILL jumps to the next page!

And here is the caption on the next page:

How do I fix this?

[Bob_Niland]

Check the /Pagination\ Keep Withs for the anchoring para, caption para, as well as preceding and subsequent paras.

Usually (but not always) FM turns out to be doing exactly what some {other?} author set or defaulted it to do.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Check the Anchored Frame panel and see if it has a Distance Above Baseline settings. If so, set it to zero (0) and always crop from the top of the frame down.

I shrinkwrap my images with their own paragraph style so the image is At Insertion Point--then my caption is set to Keep With Previous Paragraph.

[mk-will]

Hi, @Susan305351693t3o ,

when I am right there is an anchor at the end of the caption.

If so that is your problem.

An anchor MUST always stay with table/anchored frame it belongs to on the same page.

Put the anchor in its own paragraph and not in the caption para.

Regards

Stephan

[Winfried Reng]

Yes. That's true. The anchored frame will tear the anchor paragraph to the next page (except when the anchored frame is very large, so that the anchor paragraph and the anchored frame do not fit together on the same page).

However, this symbol at the end of the caption could also be hidden conditional text. Or an index marker.

[Susan305351693t3o]

What symbol?

And that makes no sense. Why would FrameMaker be programmed to separate the caption from the figure it applies to? And it doesn't happen every time.

[Susan305351693t3o]

What do you mean "When I am right there?" Right where? Where/what is the "anchor?" I didn't put any "anchors" anywhere. I just imported an image and a frame automatically goes around it. Is the anchor something that automatically happens when you import a graphic? Or does it happen automatically when you create a caption? The caption is just a paragraph style like "body" or "Heading 1." I never put any "anchors" in anything.

I don't remember anything about "anchors" in my FrameMaker training.  I apologize for my ignorance. I'm still trying to figure this program out. I've been using a proprietary content management system for 10 years and knew it like the back of my hand. But then we separated from our parent company and the content management system went with it, and they gave me FrameMaker and said, "This is what you are using now." It is a completely different animal. 

I've used InDesign, Illustrator, DreamWeaver, and Photoshop. All were easy to learn. This one is a BEAR.

[FrameMaker-dk · Accepted solution]

I think there is some terminology confusion and I believe you may not have turned on text symbols.

In order to work with anchored frames:

1. Go to View and turn on "Text Symbols". This will display all the typographic markup and also the frame anchor.
2. Put your cursor in an empty paragraph
3. Click Insert->Anchored Frame and this dialogue will pop up. These settings are the most common for inserting an anchored frame
4. 
5. Click "New Frame" This is what the frame anchor looks like. If you select it by dragging your cursor over it, you will see the anchored frame turning black. The frame anchor positions the frame in the text flow. Add text above and the frame will flow along with the text.

1. In order to put to put an image into the frame, click on the frames border, so it show selection marks.
2. Click File->Import->File->Image
3. If you want to add caption text, you can write your caption text an empty paragraph BELOW the anchored frame.
4. 
   

[Bob_Niland · Accepted solution]

There are any number of ways to accomplish caption-below-figure in FM. The simple an obvious one, Anchored Frame above current paragraph, does not exist. So here's one way to do it. This example presumes that what's desired are centered figures & captions.

Two task-specific Paragraph Formats are needed, arbitrarily named: FigureAnchor and Caption.
For the test I ran, these were derived from the current Body format, with the following differences:

¶FigureAnchor:
/Basic\
Alignment: Center
☑ Next Para Tag: [Caption]
/Pagination\
Keep with: ☐ Previous ☑ Next
Widow/Orphan Lines: 4 (or whatever your largest caption is +1)
/Numbering\
{probably none, due to shoving AF around}

¶Caption:
/Basic\
Alignment: Center
☑ Next Para Tag: [Body] {if any}
/Pagination\
Keep with: ☑ Previous ☐ Next
Widow/Orphan Lines: 4 (or whatever your largest caption is +1)
/Numbering\
{as desired}

⊥Select the FigureAnchor para.
Insert🞃
Anchored Frame…
Position: At Insertion Point
Width: / Height: {as desired}

It would be important for the preceding/following paras to not have Keep With Next/Prev set. Once in place, the fig+cap acts like a single object on reflow.

[Susan305351693t3o]

Ok. This is a little confusing for my newbie brain.

1. When you're talking about a style called "FigureAnchor" (I assume you're referring to a character style) is the style applied to the graphic or the frame around the image, or to the caption?

2. Our format is to have images left-aligned. Is it required that they be in the center for this to work? Why?

3. Everyone keeps talking about "anchored frames." My trainer never mentioned this term, even when he was teaching me about importing images. So I don't even really know what it means. I do know that when I import a graphic, it ALWAYS has a frame around it. I don't know why it needs a frame around it. Is there an option to turn that off? It seems to cause nothing but trouble.  It seems to be the cause of the caption underneath it jumping to a different page, and I'm completely baffled as to why it would do that (and it doesn't do it every time--most of the time when I import a graphic I can put a caption beneath it and it stays with the graphic just fine).

[Bob_Niland]

Paragraph Format (¶catalog), not Character (ƒcatalog).
It would also work for left-aligned, right-aligned and full-width, but not run-around. Set Alignments for both paras as desired.
re:  I do know that when I import a graphic, it ALWAYS has a frame around it.

That's merely auto-creating an AF in the currently-selected para.
But that's why I specified the steps, starting with the Insert from the top menu.

re (from an erilier reply): Why would FrameMaker be programmed to separate the caption from the figure it applies to?

FM, alas, has no real concept of caption below, or arguably captions at all.

[Susan305351693t3o]

Yes, I meant paragraph style. I think I understand now. Thank you.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Everything in FrameMaker is in a frame, be it text or graphics. Kind of shocking that it was never mentioned in a class. 

[Susan305351693t3o]

I always wondered why it was named FrameMaker.  I don't see any evidence of a "frame" in text blocks. Maybe that's just the version, or that it's a Windows not Mac OS. But no, no one ever told me that, and I never thought to ask. You would think that if all the text is in frame, there would be a selectable box around it like with images and tables. But there is not. The only thing I can select is the text itself.

I've worked with many, many, many programs in many different operating systems (UNIX, Windows, Mac OS) and I have never, ever encountered a program that is as complicated and vexing as FrameMaker. It seems like it's designed to make you need a lot of training and consultant sessions so that Adobe makes money. And there pretty much aren't any books on how to use it. My teacher didn't know of any current ones. He wrote one a long time ago, but it's no longer applicable.

It keeps happening that just when I think I've mastered it, it does something inexplicable and weird and I realize I don't understand it at all.

[Winfried Reng · Accepted solution]

Hi Susan,

I have a different approach for figure captions than Bob. It works always and it is very stable! You will put the figure into a table with only a single cell (means one row and one column). The figure title is the table title of this title.

In a separate anchor paragraph create a table with a single row and a single column. Set the width to the width of your main text frame. Set the table title to below (or above, as you like) the table.

In the table title set the paragraph format to that of your existing figure title (numbering, etc.).

Save this table as a new table format, something like "figure".

Now insert your figure into the table cell.

Voila. Everything works. Figure and figure title are never separated.

With the anchor paragraph you can control the position of your figure table.

And with the paragraph in the table cell you can control, whether the figure should be centered or left aligned.

Best regards, Winfried

[Susan305351693t3o]

Thank you Winifred. I think this is the method I will follow from here on out. I actually use tables for safety notes, where there is a symbol on the left and text to the right of it. It keeps the graphic next to the text, no matter what, and I have precise control of how close the text is to the graphic.

[Susan305351693t3o]

I'm going to mark Winifred's response as the correct answer, even though it's not the only correct answer.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I fixed that up for you - you had marked your comment as a correct answer (and you can have multiple correct answers too)

[Bob_Niland]

Winfried: I have a different approach for figure captions than Bob. It works always and it is very stable! You will put the figure into a table with only a single cell (means one row and one column). The figure title is the table title of this title.

It's different, and it's just one of several ways of doing captions, and back when I had a day job using FM, a borderless table was the solution, which required not only an atomic fig+caption, but a discreet catalog accession number for the figure object. This was done as a 3-column 2-row table (with suitable table row keeps). The top row was a 3-row straddle for the artwork, and the bottom used for:
meta | caption | objectID
The meta was track-back info about the object (format, scale, rotation) in a Character format that had a color visible only to the author (hidden by Color Views for pub). And it gets uglier: the figures always had to be in the right column of a nominally 2-col format, and stay with the related left-col text. You can see why I don't suggest this to people new to FM who just need a simple caption.

[Susan305351693t3o]

"which required not only an atomic fig+caption, but a discreet catalog accession number for the figure object. This was done as a 3-column 2-row table (with suitable table row keeps). The top row was a 3-row straddle for the artwork, and the bottom used for:
meta | caption | objectID
The meta was track-back info about the object (format, scale, rotation) in a Character format that had a color visible only to the author (hidden by Color Views for pub). And it gets uglier: the figures always had to be in the right column of a nominally 2-col format, and stay with the related left-col text. You can see why I don't suggest this to people new to FM who just need a simple caption."

Is this forum for programmers? Because I can't understand this.  Is this FrameMaker terminology? I've never heard it. I feel totally stupid 🤣. I'm not a programmer, at all. I just write manuals for conveyor furnaces and am trying to make them look nice. FrameMaker is a BEAST. My training consisted of learning the bare minimum to get me started. Master pages, paragraph and character catalogs, inserting graphics, inserting tables and creating captions, creating cross-references and TOCs. That's it. This terminolgy is completely foreign to me. 

Why would I need a 3 column table for a graphic and caption? Single column, 2 rows, one for the graphic and one for the caption. Period. Why the complexity?

Please keep in mind I'm not a programmer.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

I wonder if the graphic in a table would cause a problem with accessibility?

[Susan305351693t3o]

You guys are talking WAY over my head. Is this a forum for programmers? I thought it was for FrameMaker users. Am in the wrong place?

[Susan305351693t3o]

What do you mean by accessibily? What would be the problem.

[FrameMaker-dk · Accepted solution]

By accessability he means the use of screen readers. You can have a pdf document read aloud to you by using a screen reader. Creating documents that the screen reader software can understand and read correctly, can be challenging sometimes. The software can not "see" a graphic in a document. It needs to be told, that there is a graphic and you need to tell the reader what the graphic shows. A screen reader reads the text from one end to another, but if it encounters a table with a number of columns and rows, you may need to "explain" to the screen reader, what is shown in the table.  Acessibility is one of many standards your document may need to conform to satisfy - for instance - customers who cater to visually impaired.

[Susan305351693t3o]

That makes sense. Thank you for the explanation. This isn't an issue in my field that I know of, but it's good to know. Thank you!