centering on an en dash in a table cell ... ??

[j_rumford]

I haven't used FrameMaker for awhile, but in earlier versions I was able to center number ranges in table cells - centering on the en dash. So:

144–34

3–333

would appear perfectly centered with the en dash in the center of all cells in a table.

I can't figure out how to make this happen in FrameMaker 10. Any thoughts on this or help would be appreciated.

Jennifer

[Michael_Müller-Hillebrand]

Hi Jennifer,

I see what happens.

When you define a decimal tab position, you enter the alignment character. The en-dash is represented in dialog boxes as \=. Entering this or Alt+0150 in e.g. FrameMaker 7.2 work as expected.

FrameMaker 9 (which I used to test the behaviour) and apparently FrameMaker 10 limit the length of the alignment character field to a single character and apparently get it wrong with those special two-character representations of certain characters, like the en-dash. I would think, this is a bug.

The good solution requires a single tab character in front of the number, the workaround requires two tab positions and two tab chars: a right-aligned at your centering position and a left aligned just a little bit to the right. I have

2.0cm R

2.005cm L

and the cell content would be

<tab>144–<tab>34

<tab>3–<tab>333

- Michael

[Van Kurtz]

Michael and Jennifer,

When you define a decimal tab position, you enter the alignment character. The en-dash is represented in dialog boxes as \=. Entering this or Alt+0150 in e.g. FrameMaker 7.2 work as expected.

FrameMaker 9 (which I used to test the behaviour) and apparently FrameMaker 10 limit the length of the alignment character field to a single character and apparently get it wrong with those special two-character representations of certain characters, like the en-dash. I would think, this is a bug.

Did you try entering the en dash in body text, then copying and pasting it in the dialog box? I am thinking that FM9 is unicode aware, so there might not be a need to use sequences that worked in past versions. Just a guess.

Van

[Bob_Niland]

Work-around #3:

Use an ordinary dash.

Apply a Character Format, named, say "En-metrics".

Specify "As-Is" for all but Spread and Stretch,

which are set to emulate the desired en-dash.

[j_rumford]

Thanks for the ideas.

I tried copy and pasting from the en dash in the text in FrameMake 8. No luck.

All these work arounds are not really the best option when dealing long scientific tables that have tons of interval columns - two numbers separated by an en dash. And separating an interval of numbers by an en dash is pretty much always an industry standard.

Any chance that Adobe will address this issue?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Probably not in FM8, but you should still report it. The more people who do, weighs heavily on the decision-making at Adobe.

[j_rumford]

Thanks to all for your suggestions. I have reported this to Adobe. It appears (to me) to have crept in with version 8, as it still works in 6 and 7.

Jennifer

[David_Crowe]

Another workaround, I’m afraid: what about using a symbol or dingbats font that has an en-dash (or minus sign?) in a standard single-byte position?

But point taken about the shortcoming of the program as it stands.

[Guest]

Thanks for reporting the issue. We have verified that the issue exists from FrameMaker8. We have taken a note of the issue and will work on the same.

Regards,

Rajat Bansal

Engineering Manager, Adobe FrameMaker

[j_rumford]

This works but rather painful workaround for a table that has uneven number of digits before and after the en dash.

##-###.###

###-#

###-######

[Lynne A. Price]

Wow, I gotta say I'm shocked by this one.

As Rajat noted, it seems to have been introduced with the introduction of Unicode support in FM8 and still exists in FM12.

Setting the alignment character in an EDD doesn't work. Nor does opening an FM7 MIF file. I could not find a way to specify the en dash in MIF.

Michael's recommendation of a right tab seems to be the best workaround.

         --Lynne