[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 20, 2003

I work on a Mac in OS-X. I am proficient in Word, pretty good at InDesign, and a beginner with FM, which I need for a large book (28-30 chapters, 600-800 pages).

The FM layout process sure is clunky in comparison to working with InDesign -- everything feels more rigid and it takes lots more clicks and keystrokes to accomplish anything. The FM text editor is great, and far more stable than Word, but it sure feels and looks dated. I'm trying not to let that stop me because I'd really like it if I never had to open Word again.

So, things I wish an FM upgrade would have:

Easier text flow and frame connection -- more like InDesign, which is very fluid. Viewable text threads so you can see the flow when you need to.

Contrast color grid lines; more options for grid spacing. Option to view baselines.
Movable guide lines.

More ability to customize toolbars and keystrokes.

More freedom to place anchored frames without so many work-arounds needed -- maybe I'm not familiar enough with the program, but it sure isn't intuitive how to get them in the right place, at the right size, and have them stay put. Arranging graphics in relation to text on a page might take me a minute in InDesign, and ten times as long in FM. I often feel like the program is fighting me because the rules are too rigid. Too often I find myself trying to trick it into letting me do something that ought to be simple, like having a graphic straddle a side head and a text frame without knocking out the text or slipping off the page entirely. Grrrrr.

A couple of ideas that FM could borrow from Word -- I really like the "Document Map" in Word for Mac. This is a panel that slides out to the side of the text window that lets you see the outline or hierarchy of the document. It is a great navigation tool -- clicking on a heading in the document map takes you to the text. Also "Outline" view in Word is generated automatically and lets you move blocks of text. I think it is similar to the Elements View in Structured FM (which I'm not familiar with), Anyhow, Document Map or Outline View, or even better, a combination of the two would be really good to have in FM.

FM allows you to build a dictionary of abbreviations for commonly used words and then use Find and Replace to expand them. It's very helpful, but isn't as good as the AutoCorrect in Word that completes the abbreviations as you type. Major time saver.

And of course, OS-X please, please, please!! FM is the only legacy program I still use and the UI is really dated.

Of course, I suppose one could speculate about InDesign evolving into the OS-X version of FM...Just like SGML used to be an add-on to FM, maybe the more robust FM features could be written as add-ons to ID? One "module" could be a serious text editor, (and no, Story Editor doesn't do it, but is that where this is going?). Another chunk could be the "Book" for chapters with footnotes, cross-references, indexes, etc. If they ported over the pieces of FM that are missing in ID, they wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel, and perhaps we'd get a modernized version of FM more quickly.

Report · Nov 25, 2003

Precisely. It's not a matter of caring or not caring about the Mac, I think Adobe is sticking by their excuse that Frame's code is too old to do any major rework, like trying to port to the Aqua interface of OS X. Well, what are their plans for Longhorn? Now that's gonna be one hell of a graphic-rich behemoth. Is Frame's old code up to that challenge?

Report · Dec 01, 2003

FM 7.1 upgrade announced: <<a href="/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.2cceac03">Dov Isaacs "FrameMaker 7.1 Announced -- ( BW)(CA-ADOBE-SYSTEMS)(ADBE) New Version of Adobe FrameMaker Extends Powerful XML Capabilities" 12/1/03 8:19am>

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Dec 01, 2003

The only thing that wets my whistle is the "real" support for SVG, and I don't need that right now. I am very, extremely interested to learn what bug fixes made it in ... runaround bug, crashes while searching, crashes while spell checking, etc. I could use some of the bug fixes <g>. Cheers, Sean

Report · Dec 02, 2003

Bug fixes...how about getting a version that runs on an operating system that has been out for more than two years? If LongHorn ever gets released will it take five years to get a new version of FrameMaker that will run on it?

Sad. I don't think Adobe will get a visit from Santa this year.

Report · Dec 02, 2003

Cyrillic character support. I manage a documentation suite that we translate into Russian, among other languages. I just got Frame, and I am still trying to figure out how to make this work. Please stop making things so difficult and let Frame recognize Cyrillic characters, otherwise I will have to keep those documents in Word, which defeats the whole purpose of getting Frame.

Report · Dec 10, 2003

I am using FrameMaker Version-7. I found in equations, "=" and "+" not aligned vertically to "-" and horizontal line (dividing numerator and denominator). Version-3 does not have this problem. Don't know about Version-7.1.

Report · Dec 11, 2003

First above all: an OS X native version. Our workflow is based entirely on Mac. When we have that, how about native support for layered Photoshop images?
Regarding the alternative software suggestions, in my experience Word and ID-CS are not options for long technical manuals that require routine updates. I manage safety training and lab teaching manuals for a university science department. The text in all the manuals is updated twice yearly to reflect changes in protocols or regulations, requests from instructors, etc. Text rewrites alone take a month; who knows how long renumbering all the protocols, subsections, etc., manually could take. That eliminates ID-CS.
Word is even less useful. When I inherited the (much smaller) predecessors to these manuals several years back, they were already too complex for Word to handle. Both the newest OS X and XP versions still misprint auto-numbered items, display TIFFs inconsistently between the screen and PDF, and do not import boilerplate text properly. Auto-numbers preceding steps in a protocol are also unstable if the steps are on more than one page.
Adobe should remember that many science departments have a significant financial investment in Macs already. These same departments are where future technical writers are trained. Not having an OS X native version will limit Adobe's exposure to future customers (in both operating systems).

Report · Dec 15, 2003

Seeing that announcement for 7.1 not being available for Macs seems to me to be the writing on the wall for us Mac users. I'd sure like to hear otherwise, officially or semi-officially. And NO, we're not switching to windows machines for the sake of this one software. We'll just have to figure out another workflow.

--Ron

Report · Dec 17, 2003

Surprized I haven't seen anything about Better Mouse Support, (WHEEL). It comes up frequently enought in this forum.

Report · Dec 29, 2003

I'd like to request five things.
1. Linux support.
2. Better typography for mathematics. In particular, the placement of operands on the large operators is poor (summation, integral, etc.). Typically, the vertical spacing is much too great, making the equations unattractive and causing them to take up too much space.
3. A fix to the shrink wrap problem on equations. When I change printers, the fonts change slightly, meaning that the equations no longer fit properly in their shrink wrapped frames. The frames should automatically re size, or at worst, there should be a "re-shrink wrap all shrink wrapped equations" function.
4. Provide a new type of floating table: "float to top of page". It would float to the top of the current page if it could do so with out pushing the reference on to the next page, otherwise it would float to the next page. This would increase the likelihood that the floating table would actually be found on the page where it was referenced, and would also reduce the fragmentation of the page that results from having tables in the middle of the page. And while you are at it, perhaps you can fix the long standing floating table bug.
5. A grammar checker. Currently, I copy the text of my documents to word, and use it to point out grammatical errors. It'd be nice if I could check the grammar from within Framemaker.

-Ken

Report · Dec 31, 2003

Ken,

A FM-specific third-party grammar checker (MAXit) is available at
http://www.smartny.com/maxit.htm

Report · Dec 30, 2003

> When I change printers, the fonts change slightly,

Check to see you're NOT using printer-resident fonts for which you don't have the actual font on your system. For more information about this, see www.techknowledgecorp.com/help and look for "Where do fonts come from?" in the left column.

Report · Dec 31, 2003

Cool Arnis. How much?

Report · Dec 31, 2003

Sean,

No idea. You have to use their online quick quote system. Most of
their clients tend to be large corporations, so I wouldn't be
surprised at some sticker shock.

Report · Jan 05, 2004

Re Ken's request... >>5. A grammar checker. Currently, I copy the text of my documents to word, and use it to point out grammatical errors. It'd be nice if I could check the grammar from within Framemaker.<< ...please, NO! A grammar checker offers (IMHO) not only no value but *negative* value, and its inclusion in any new version will be, at best, a waste of code. Let me explain: I confess at the beginning that the only grammar checker I have significant experience with is Word's, and perhaps (almost certainly) there are better ones. But because human language in general, and English in particular, is so syntactically diverse and variable, I sincerely doubt that any current software can adequately identify all the possible grammatically acceptable structures. Here's an example from this morning's work: In a memo I was reviewing, Word had marked "that" as an error, suggesting "which" as a replacement. As you might guess, the "that" in question followed a comma, and Word was interpreting it as an incorrectly restrictive relative pronoun. As it happened, though, the relative clause in question *was* restrictive; the comma was actually the closing comma of a pair that set off a parenthetical aside. The sentence was correct as written, and not a particularly exotic syntactical structure either, yet Word recommended "fixing" it in a way that would actually *create* an error. This is absolutely common: Word suggests incorrect or unnecessary "corrections" FAR more often than it fixes actual errors. As an editor, I can reliably identify authors who rely on the grammar checker by the specific errors I find in their work. Unless you flunked 6th grade English (or substitute your native language), *YOU* are almost certainly a better grammar checker than any software. This is emblematic of what's wrong with Word: It's full of "features" that ostensibly make it easier to produce good writing, but in fact make it harder. Let's not beg Adobe to infect FrameMaker with the same disease, shall we? <climbing down off my soapbox now... ;^) > -Bill

Report · Jan 05, 2004

I would not mind many of these add-on requests, *if* they were developed as external plug-ins one could turn off to fight bloat.

Report · Jan 05, 2004

I agree that grammar checking is something I do NOT want incorporated into any of my tools.

Re: "plugins, turning off": I would add the abilty to discard certain plug-ins entirely to fight user interface clutter. One of Word's primary obnoxiousnesses, which Microsoft has tried unsuccessfully to resolve with its too-clever-by-half "adaptive" menus, is the breadth and depth of its menu system.

Report · Jan 05, 2004

I agree with Bill's assessment of grammar checkers with respect to their suggested remedies. You simply cannot treat them too seriously. However, I do find that a grammar checkers are useful for finding errors. I personally find that many errors in my writing I simply do not see despite how many times I proofread them. I use a grammar checker to identify potential errors, which I then read carefully and either fix or not as appropriate. Once I have proofread a paper I have written I run the grammar checker and invariable find more than a few gramatical errors.

-Ken

Report · Jan 05, 2004

Well, while I mostly agree with y'all about grammar checkers, I do not that I never miss a sentence-ending period in Word but have occasionally in FrameMaker. It would be nice to have the resource as a plug-in for such things.

Report · Jan 05, 2004

The grammar checker that Arnis mentioned is - gasp - $1500 for one person. My Harbrace College handbook, via a library book sale, cost $1.

And I agree with several previous posters that American English grammar is too much for a mere computer, at least at this time. Maybe when we get to 512-bit processors running at 10-gig, 10 gigs memory, 1 terabyte disks. and Windows (fill in your own definition)...

Report · Jan 05, 2004

$1500?!?! Hmmmm, they can keep it, I guess.

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Jan 06, 2004

First off, apologies for starting a topic that seems to be drifting away from feature requests. That said, just one more post... ;^)

Ken:

>>You simply cannot treat them too seriously. However, I do find that a grammar checkers are useful for finding errors.<<

I used to think that. I used to think grammar checkers were useless for advanced writers, who create sophisticated sentences the software can't handle, but useful for weak writers who generate a large number of errors. After observing the results of Word's on-the-fly grammar checking (which is on by default) in a large population of writers at various skill levels, I no longer think so: Word flags so many sentences that aren't really errors that I believe it actively confuses weak writers and makes their writing worse. This might not be quite as bad with a grammar checker that you had to deliberately invoke, but even so, the writers I'm thinking of are done no service by software that makes them feel uncertain about even the things they're doing right.

>>I personally find that many errors in my writing I simply do not see despite how many times I proofread them.<<

You are no doubt a skilled enough writer to ignore the ten bogus flags you see for every one that helps you by catching a real error. You may not realize how special that makes you! ;^)

Just my humble $.02...

-Bill

Report · Jan 06, 2004

If given a choice between getting a FrameMaker grammar checker, or getting some number of the other feature requests identified in the preceding 443 unfulfilled posts to this thread, please put me down for "some of the other."

Wheee! -- the FrameMaker development glacier races downhill!

Cheers,
Riley

Report · Jan 09, 2004

Why bother with feature requests. FrameMaker is finally a dead product (for the Mac) as was published in MacAddict this month. The PC may have a year or two left, but it is really time to start getting used to InDesign. I really hope Adobe bothers to post the InDesign CS tryout at some point for the Mac.

The open source XML products are rapidly making FM a program of the past (since it hasn't been updated since FM4). KOffice has now been ported over to OSX and that may become the new FM.

If Adobe cares about technical documents they will get their act going and come out with an OSX version. If not...the wheel will stop spinning due to friction. I fear the wheel has already fallen off and is rolling around on the floor.

Why can't Adobe be a good company like Macromedia?

(it is Friday...I"ve worked a bit much this week)