[Closed] FrameMaker 7.x/8 Feature Requests

Report · Aug 19, 2002

Time to start entering these. If you are unsure about whether FM has the feature yet, please do some research and figure it out before posting.

Please don't post requests for assistance in here, either.

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Nov 23, 2005

... as long as it's the _last_ action you want to repeat <g> So add that by all means, but don't let anyone take away or re-map the more fine-grained repeat commands.

Report · Dec 27, 2005

- Border for paragraphs, "à la Word", that is border that can be differentiated as above, below, right, left and between. When several paragraphs of the same type follow each other, only the first have border above and only the last has border below.

- Shading for normal paragraphs. (Unlike paragraphs in tables, paragraphs belongs to the main text flow and the can be split between pages.

- Table cells that split between pages.

- Several different flows for floating object. That way, a small table can belong to flow A and a large table to flow B. If the small table appears after the big one, and there is room for the small one at the bottom of the page and not for the big one, the small table should be put in that space and so appear before the big one. This is needed because tables may be used for many different things such as boxed text, figures and true tables, and there might be no need that there order be maintained.

- Better typography (or even MUCH BETTER typography)

- Adjustable space before and after elements like paragraphs : a space before should be specified, for example as 3pt (ideal), 2pt (minimum), and 5pt (maximum) to achieve better vertical justification.

- Words containing a hard space should hyphenate. In some language, punctuation are preceded by a (hard) space. FrameMaker never hyphenate such words.

- Words that are wider than the justification should hyphenate. (They don't and I call this a bug.)

- Use of meta-styles for characters and paragraphs. Regular styles should heritate from those meta-styles, so we could change a complete style sheet by only wswitching meta-styles.

Report · Dec 27, 2005

Some thoughts: You can do a border above and below by using "Frame Above Pgf" and Frame "Below Pgf" combined with a reference-page graphic. Do you find shading a long paragraph that splits pages enhances readability? For a short note, such as in a table, I can see where shading might call attention to the text. But over the long haul, I would expect shading the background of a paragraph reduces readability. Does feathering or balancing columns accomplish what you need? I think the flexibility of table cells that split pages might be good to have, but I dislike splitting table cells across tables, personally. I'm not sure what you are doing with flows, but I agree using different flows could be made more useful, predictable, and reliable than it is now. Sounds like you are looking for some sort of complex content auto-arrangement, though. There are things I like about how FrameMaker handles typography and things I hate. FrameMaker certainly is not sophisticated in this regard. But, FrameMaker is suited for long technical documents and reducing authoring time and editing and revision time by using repeating, somewhat fixed approach, versus an ad-hoc customization on many pages approach. (I don't like using manual page breaks nor soft returns, either. <g>) Perhaps InDesign has some of the features you need? I do like how FrameMaker tells me when I use a font I don't have installed, but I dislike how the FrameMaker GUI doesn't give me access to fix all such problems. You can set the space before a paragraph using an indent. The space between is changed with Space: Above Pgf and Space: Below Pgf. I don't like the indent to change (I don't think ragged left helps readability) and I don't care much for the space between paragraphs to change, either, because when I read I get used to a regularly (and reasonably) sized space between paras. Can you use FrameMaker's Not sure about your hyphenation issues, but have you tried customizing your dictionary file? It's not the easiest thing to get into, but it is documented. Use of meta styles seems like a decent idea; I'd not benefit because my styles seldom change. Are you changing your styles a lot such that importing re-defined styles from a designated template file doesn't work well for you? Hopefully there are some ideas here that can help you out if you've not tried them already. I wholeheartedly agree that FrameMaker is showing its age and has been for some time now. Cheers, Sean

Report · Dec 29, 2005

On Tue, 27 Dec 2005 11:31:42 -0800, Sean@adobeforums.com wrote:

>Do you find shading a long paragraph that splits pages enhances readability?

Yes! Concrete example: "Framework Design Guidelines" by
Cwalina/Abrams, Addison-Wesley 2005.

This is a book about designing a software framework in the context of
Microsoft's .NET technology, written by Microsoft engineers.
(An extremely useful book if you're a software developer using that
technology, by the way.)

The main text describes the various issues that a framework designer
might face, along with the "standard" recommendations of the MS team.
Sprinkled throughout the text are shaded text blocks that contain the
comments and ruminations of particular MS engineers concerning the
preceding tips.

These comments (which are the most valuable part of the book, by the
way) are not part of the main text flow, so they should be set apart
visually. They range from a single paragraph to over a page, and
frequently stretch across pages. If so, the darker frame that
normally surrounds them is left open on the "continuation borders".

I found that this design greatly enhances the readibility of the book.

There's no indication of the software used to prepare the book, alas.
It might have been MS Word since the internal MS docs from which the
book was composed were maintained as Word files.
--
http://www.kynosarges.de

Report · Dec 27, 2005

Free coffee with every 'update book' operation. ;-)

Report · Dec 28, 2005

[Do you find shading a long paragraph that splits pages enhances readability?]

Sean, this is typically "Tell us what you need and we'll tell you how to do without it". The point is not to decide if shadiung text increase or decrease readability. I need it, because I am asked to use it ! I use tables for this, but table paragraphs don't split between pages, and such tables interfere with "true" floating tables. (Table used for shading should not float.)

Regarding typography, InDesign is much better, but it lacks the most important : the (documented) MIF format !

Regarding hyphenation, this is clearly a bug, as reported by the technical support staffsinc version 6 (or is it 5.5 ?:-(

Anyway, thanks for your comments ! (And tehre are many things I really love in FrameMaker !)

Report · Dec 29, 2005

One idea that might or might not work:

I think you can add shading to any object, which includes text frames.
Could you define custom text frames for your shaded paragraphs and
then associate them with a second text flow that only contains the
paragraphs that should be shaded?

Even if it works it's going to be hard to maintain, though, since
you'd have to resize and reposition text frames as the main text flow
is being edited.
--
http://www.kynosarges.de

Report · Dec 28, 2005

I forgot the most important improvment I would need in FrameMaker : It should NEVER crash when opening a MIF file, whatever it might contain. It should just report (usefull) information about the bad content.

Report · Dec 28, 2005

Hi,

Yes, there's no perfect software tool, eh?

Does the creating reversed type info on Tim Murray's site help? http://www.techknowledgecorp.com/

As for telling people how to do without what they ask:

1) Manage expectations.
a) Not all tools do all things.
b) Work costs money, time, and resources. For some kinds of work, the payoff is not worth it; often this is especially true when you consider the upkeep of a "special."
2) Offer your professional advice. Consider what you know, have learned, observed, and experienced as a professional communicator, such as sometimes a shaded background can hinder communication. Or, that tables can hinder communication if used by people using screen readers. Etc.

However, I mostly agree with you. There are certainly some features that would offer flexibility in which the FrameMaker team should invest, and there are long-standing bugs that Adobe really needs to fix ....

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Dec 29, 2005

Sounds fair enough. I've not seen the background shading of text you mention, I'll double check. I wonder why we don't shade the backgrounds of every paragraph on every page if it enhances readability? Think it's an expense thing, more ink/toner and that sort of thing?

Instead, I propose that the shaded background works to draw your attention to particular text but does not actually make the text more readable. (I would argue that it makes the text less readable.) I further propose that shading the background of a paragraph works well for short paragraphs but as the shaded-background text gets longer, the diminished readability lessens the payoff of the attention-grabbing shading, such that the technique works best for notes, tips, and the like.

You can create and manually maintain separate text boxes with a shaded background; miss one and your pagination gets hosed, though.

In other words, yes, you can do that. Consider the cost:benefit ratio. The benefits are it draws your eye to a particular piece of text (unless you're shading the background of all the text), the drawbacks are it's more difficult to implement, more tricky to maintain, and introduces a potential error in that if you miss one when updating your content, it'll make a mess.

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Dec 29, 2005

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005 05:42:59 -0800, Sean@adobeforums.com wrote:

>I wonder why we don't shade the backgrounds of every paragraph on every page if it enhances readability? Think it's an expense thing, more ink/toner and that sort of thing?

Don't be silly, nobody said or implied that. The book I mentioned has
two distinct text flows that are intermingled: one for the description
of the subject at hand, another for comments.

Shading is for separation, and it enhances readability because you can
easily locate comment blocks while just as easily being able to follow
the main text between the comments. That's important for a book that
is mostly used as a reference while working.

Of course shading doesn't improve the readability of individual
characters -- if that was the only goal we'd typeset everything in 24
point Garamond! But if light enough, shading doesn't noticeably
degrade readability either. I had no problem reading multi-paragraph
comments on a shaded background.
--
http://www.kynosarges.de

Report · Dec 29, 2005

'Tis the season to be silly. <g> I see what you are saying. Previously, I thought you were suggesting that words and paragraphs on a shaded background were easier to read than words and paragraphs on a white background. I believe shading hinders the readability of the content that sits on the shading, especially for longer passages. I agree that shading helps grab your attention and is extremely helpful in sorting different content threads. I agree font choice is important, and often overlooked. Though, with a typical 4-to-6 inch text column, 24 points probably hinders readability except in short headings. <vBg> As I suggested, I think for short paragraphs, like notes and tips, shading would work. In my opinion, this technique would work best in FrameMaker because note tables, and such, work well in the text flow. As you suggest, using ad-hoc text frames with shading can work (and you can apply borders) but my thoughts on that are to consider the extra effort required not just to implement those but to maintain them over time. (I've worked a fair bit with this technique -- hafta admit, it felt more natural in both Ventura and PageMaker than in FrameMaker). I think, perhaps, making font choices to aid readability is easier to implement and more robust in the FrameMaker application. I think the best way forward would be for Adobe to rework text flows so that multiple flows are easier to use and maintain in a document. Cheers, Sean

Report · Dec 29, 2005

> 'Tis the season to be silly.

Tra-la-la-la-la la la la la.

Report · Dec 29, 2005

Oh, and apologies ... here I was, thinking of the best way to go about doing certain things *with the current product* and this being a *feature requests* thread.

Yes, more flexibility with regards to layout would be great! What FrameMaker has is old -- it's gotten us this far but needs reworking.

So, let me add my wish that Flows are made more useful and usable in upcoming releases!

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Dec 29, 2005

Having read the back and forth for the last couple of days, let me comment that I *think* (I could be wrong, if so please correct me!) that the main purpose of this particular sub-list is for people to post REQUESTs of new features, rather than DISCUSS their relative merits back and forth. I really think that should go on the main list.

Thanks :)

K

Report · Dec 29, 2005

Right. Mea Culpa.

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Dec 29, 2005

Support for relative units, e.g. em, ex would be useful for defining indents, tabs and so on. Ideally these should be recalculated whenever the base paragraph font size changes and not fixed at the time the definition is initially made.

Jon

Report · Dec 31, 2005

I completely agree with what Chris said about shading paragraph. It is used to differentiate text flows. Frame text may be shaded to differentiate it from the main text flow. This improves the readability of the book, even if the readability of the characters may suffer a bit.

However, this is not the reason why I need : I need shaded paragraphs because my customers ask for it. No questions ! I have the choice to :

- manually put shaded box behind the text : cumbersome to lay out and won't flow when text changes.

- use tables : problems because because it a real table floats to the next page, a shaded paragraph which appears after the table in the text will be laid out after the table, even if there is room at the bottom of the page, where normal paragraphs would go.

- use anchor frames containing text frames : the ideal way to go (allowing multicolumn boxed text) if the frame could resize automatically when text is added or removed. As this is not possible, I have to resize the frames manually. Also, the text cannot be imported directly and formatted simply with a style. I have to cut the text, create the frames and past the text in them.

- create a plugin to automatically put a shaded box behind specific paragraph. This is simple and efficient. The only problem is that it is not dynamic. If the text change, I have to remove the boxes and put them again. As this is a matter of less than a hundred line of C code, it would probably not cost much to had it to FrameMaker.

By the way, there are other functionnalities I need in FrameMaker, although as I have implemented them as plugins, I do not need to ask for them, although I think it might be useful to others, for example :

- make a paragraph on line shorter or one line longer

- justify the last line of a paragraph

- make selected text fit on one line

- allow specific last line right indent (the same as first line left indent). This is needed in table of contents when title are broken on several lines. Without it, one have to cut lines manually.

- make possible to allow/disallow page or column breaks between table of content and index entries based on context : do no break after a level one is it is followed by a level two, do not break before the last level 2, etc.

- make possible to update only the page numbers in table of contents and indexes. This is needed when some manual changes have been made to the index or table text and would be lost if the text in generated again.

I have dozens of other suggestions that are all based on things I have to do manually that FrameMaker could to for me !

Report · Jan 05, 2006

Another thing I need : assign a different layout to the first and last page of a document. (Running heads are usually different on these page. Better even, let us decide that on specific layout will be affected to page n, so that we can automatically have different layouts affected to page 1, 2, 3, etc. I usually need first, second, third, current left, current right and last.

Even better : automatically choose a different layout for last page if it is nearly full or nearly empty.

Report · Jan 05, 2006

Not to sidetrack the thread, but FM has always accommodated a different layout for the first page of a chapter and master page mapping in recent versions accommodates differing layouts for the last page and other pages within the document if you work it right. No need to continue this discussion here, if you need more info post in the forum. If you want more layout flexibility as a future enhancement, consider that understood. <g> Cheers, Sean

Report · Feb 02, 2006

Hi,

I would love to see the zoom in and zoom out work the same way as other Adobe products (CTRL +) zooms in and (CTRL -) zooms out. I use FM, PhotoShop and Illustrator and the other two programs do this, but not FM.

Thanks
Don

Report · Feb 02, 2006

Assuming you are running FM on Windows, add the following to wincmds.cfg, in the fminit\configui folder: <Modify ZoomIn <KeySequence ^\+ > > <Modify ZoomOut <KeySequence ^- > > Ian Don_Hennessey@adobeforums.com wrote: > > I would love to see the zoom in and zoom out work the same way as other Adobe products (CTRL +) zooms in and (CTRL -) zooms out. I use FM, PhotoShop and Illustrator and the other two programs do this, but not FM.

Report · Feb 02, 2006

Note: it won't activate the +/- keys on the numeric keypad and the
"Ctrl -" overrides the discretionary hyphen shortcut.

Report · Mar 05, 2006

I wish Adobe would drag the UK English dictionary into the century of the computer. I just spell-checked a document using FM7.0 and the words I had to teach the dictionary included reboot, protocols, Internet and configure. None of these are exactly new or obscure, especially among FM's target audience.

Cheers, Rebecca

Report · Mar 14, 2006

I request the following two refinements to FrameMaker 7.2's File > File Info field entry process:

1. Make it so that entering a _comma_ in either the Author or Keywords fields no longer results in _quotation marks_ appearing around those entries in the resulting PDF's File > Document Properties corresponding fields. (A comma in the other fields fortunately does not result in quotation marks.)

I'm not sure how Keywords are intended to be entered (whether they might ever include a comma), but definitely an Author field might include a comma, such as ABC, Inc. This causes the resulting Author field in the PDF to be "ABC, Inc." with those unwanted quote marks.

2. Refine the File > File Info entry method for the scenario in which a book file is involved. The refinements should be that the user will no longer need to do any of the following user-UNintuitive steps that are apparently required in order to make the File > Field Info entries "take" (as opposed to stay as the previous File > Info entries, which can be a real problem):
2a. The user will no longer need to select the top line in the book file
2b. The user will no longer need to select all files in the book (Control+A) before selecting File > Info, to result in the needed radio box display and needed checkmarking of those radio boxes
2c. The user will no longer need to click "Save" after clicking "Set"

The user should be able to simply open the book file, select File > Info, type the entries, and click Set, with the resulting PDF displaying these latest "set" entries. That is how it works in the non-book scenario (no radio box display and checkmarking needed, no extra "Save" step needed). Or am I missing something about how users might be using/entering file information in the book situation?

Please describe the refined _steps_ needed in FrameMaker's Help on this book metadata topic (seen by searching for "Metadata"), instead of the current "you may want to..." narrative.