[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 · Mar 25, 2003

My suggestions would be:

1. Allow sideheads to be turned on or off in master pages. That way you can use some pages with side heads, and some not in the same document.

2. Be able to use the "TAB" key to create new rows in tables. This is a useful feature in Word, and it saves time instead of using the mouse to add a new row.

3. Screen refreshes: Scrap CTRL+L (or at least, don't make it so necessary), and make the program refresh automatically and often.

4. Ditto on all font resolution problems, and finding fonts that are hidden in the document. I'd love it if the error message would say, "you have fonts in this document that aren't in your font folders. Want us to replace them and change all instances of them so this message won't bother you again?"

5. A better Forums page. This blog is lousy, and hard to navigate. Surely Adobe is capable of making one easier to navigate!

Report · Mar 25, 2003

> 2. Be able to use the "TAB" key to create new rows in tables. This is a
useful feature in Word, and it saves time instead of using the mouse to add
a new row.

Learn the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Return. Try it anywhere in a table.

> 4. Ditto on all font resolution problems, and finding fonts that are
hidden in the document. I'd love it if the error message would say, "you
have fonts in this document that aren't in your font folders. Want us to
replace them and change all instances of them so this message won't bother
you again?"

Uhm... Isn't that exactly the way it's working today? I assume you mean
you want to know which fonts are missing and a nicer way to select their
replacements?

--
/Thomas Michanek, FrameMaker/UNIX/MIF expert
Technical Communicator, Uppsala, Sweden
http://go.to/framers/

Report · Mar 25, 2003

Ability to conditionalize the built-in graphics created from the FM toolbar, such as rounded rectangle.

What I'd *really* like is the ability to create conditional callouts where the text box and surrounding rectangle shrink or grow according to the amount of text content, but...

at least I'd like to be able to show/hide a particular callout, including its surrounding rectangle/circle and its arrows.

Report · Mar 26, 2003

Ron Robertson (msg 235) said he'd use FrameMaker for word processing if it was OS X native. I have to agree. Word is buggy and unstable (it crashes about every two hours or so for me) while FM is the most stable piece of software.

Adobe could remarket FM as a word processor with balls.

Whatever - PORT IT TO OS X!

Report · Mar 30, 2003

> Whatever - PORT IT TO OS X!

Indeed. Frame, Acrobat, and Distiller are the only mainstream apps I use every day that prevent me from going OS X. (You see, when I do, I'm going 100% -- no "classic" apps for me!)

Report · Apr 02, 2003

Some desiderata:

1) Footnotes: echoing request #43, let's have at least the first line of the footnote text always appearing on the same page as the referring point and continued on the next page if necessary - with a facility to split long footnotes across pages flexibly.

Since there doesn't seem to be a wish-list for FM7.x/8 in the Framemaker + SGML forum, here is what I'm wanting for Structured FM:

2) An XML element on import defaults to a container, and in formatting this corresponds to a paragraph. But this creates difficulties when you want a list of several XML elements to be contained in a single paragraph, perhaps delimited by commas or semi-colons, with the penultimate element followed by an ampersand and the last by a period, e.g.
[Indent]x1, x2, x3, ... x(n-1) & x(n).
A solution to this is to use the Run-In Head option in the Paragraph Designer, but it wasn't really designed for this function and you may then have to define separate paragraph formats for the first, middle and last elements and (trickier) the penultimate element.
It's probably too deep in the FM software design to change it now, but ideally an XML element should default to a paragraph element, which may or may not constitute a whole paragraph.

3) Also in Structured FM, format rules should have the option of being ANDed instead of ORed.

Report · Apr 14, 2003

I suggest that if a pdf does display without rotation, that it should display when rotated. I suggest that if a pdf displays in Frame for Windows, it should display in Frame for UNIX. I suggest that if an EPS does diesplay in UNIX, it should display in Windows.

UTF-8 appears to be working toward standard equations.

Line numbering? Required by some publishers, three clicks in Word, impossible w/out a developer kit in Frame!

For some reason my Frame crashes constantly. It happens most when there are multiple files open, but that's not necessary. It's almost impossible to work on anything. Any ideas?

Report · Apr 14, 2003

> For some reason my Frame crashes constantly ... Any ideas?

Please start a fresh thread, and cover the basics, like OS, any specific errors, anything common to the files, and so on.

Report · Apr 18, 2003

OK, here's a good one:

Kill <$startrange> and <$endrange> completely from index markers, and make FM intelligent enough to see sequential patterns and construct a range in the index itself.

Or, make it an option for those who prefer to index by term/single instance rather than muck with ranges directly.

Having an index that originally looks like "term 23, 45, 46, 47, 78" be converted to "term 23, 45-47, 78" automatically without the need for range entries would be very nice.

Report · Apr 18, 2003

Bill --
<$autorange> does that. Place it directly in front of the <$pagenum> building block. For more info, see www.techknowledgecorp.com/help and click Indexes in the left column.

Report · Apr 18, 2003

Ah, cool! I hadn't realized this was available to us!

Thanks!

Report · Apr 18, 2003

Since WWP no longer uses the index, this won't help with any online help issues in WWP 2003. I have no idea of WWP took advantage of this in WWP 7. I am told Mif2Go handles page ranges in its output.

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Apr 18, 2003

Hmmmm.

If you have five adjacent index markers, and are using <$autorange> in the index, then your print will have a page-range and WWP output will have a marker for each of your five topics.

Cool, that works. Thanks Tim, I've not used <$autorange> before.

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Apr 19, 2003

I would like a "book name" or "volume name" building block/system variable that can be used in cross references. For example, a cross reference format might look like this:


See "<$paratext>" on page <$pagenum> in <$bookname>

Volume numbers are meaningless in this case.

Report · Apr 20, 2003

Mike,

Simply set the <$volnum> to use text instead of the numbers (it's way
down at the bottom of the scroll list)..

Report · Apr 21, 2003

I think more user-defined variables would be useful in FM, and it'd be cool to associate them to a control at the book level as-needed. Custom variables in addition to <$volnum> and <$chapnum> would be very cool... or at least the ability to assign a "tag" to variables to you can use them in xrefs and such...

Report · Apr 22, 2003

I should be nice to be able to turn on or off the true type fonts just like in corel ventura.

And I think it's about time to have multiple undo!!!!!!

Report · Apr 22, 2003

Use a font manager and turn them off there.

Report · Apr 22, 2003

>I should be nice to be able to turn on or off the true type fonts just like in corel ventura

?

If you don't want them, don't include them in your styles.

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Apr 22, 2003

I suggest that *all* FrameMaker dialog boxes close with the same key or keys. Some dialog boxes can be closed by simply pressing ESC (best); other dialog boxes require ALT-F4.

Because I'm a keystroke kinda' guy, I occasionally key open the wrong dialog box. It would be *soooo* nice to just be able to press ESC when this happens...

Report · Apr 22, 2003

Print the Structure View.

Be able to copy & paste the structure tree from the Structure View as graphic objects.

Define user variables in EDD.

Create unique numbers for attributes, similiar to what the cross reference and ID does. Basically need a random and unique number created when the element is created.

The unformated raw value of the date and time.

Ability to paste a special character (symbol, WingDing, etc.) in the autonumber box and have that font maintained. Example - square bullet with an auto-number or checked checkbox with the autonumber using a default character tag.

Frame Beside Paragraph like the Frame Above or Below Paragraph to include a reference frame.

Change the length of the Cross Reference ID value.

Report · Apr 22, 2003

"tws":
> Be able to copy & paste the structure tree from the
> Structure View as graphic objects.

Why not just capture a screenshot of the Structure View window?

Bryce

Report · Apr 22, 2003

To print the structured view get PrintTree from
http://www.telecable.es/personales/cud/cssIndex.htm (click on the Free
Downloads).

Report · Apr 25, 2003

Adobe should stop relying on Documentum, SiberLogic, Lightspeed Astoria, and XyEnterprise Contenta to provide CMS capabilities. Turn FrameMaker Server into FrameMaker XML Server, and put the various XML repository vendors out of the FrameMaker integration business, which they currently do so poorly. This would be a full-featured, Web-DAV enabled XML repository that uses FrameMaker as its client interface. It would use XML as its stored file format, but move back and forth between XML, MIF, and FM binary so seamlessly that end users would not be able to tell it was happening. Cross-doc xrefs would be fully preserved. Version histories kept. Workflow support. Book and file level save to XML that preserves external links. Even WebWorks AutoMap Server could be plugged in as an HTML/online help engine.

Report · Apr 25, 2003

Paragraph Designer: Add another field for Last indent. This would enable you to set the right indent of the last line of a paragraph differently from the right indent of the preceding lines. This would solve the problem of tab leaders in TOCs that run into page numbers or page numbers flushing left immediately after a line break.