Equations and graphics in HTML output from FrameMaker are blurry images

[Melony28324205huex]

We are using FrameMaker 2017 for a document that typically publishes to PDF but now must publish to HTML, as well. 

We've resolved most of the mapping issues, but we continue to struggle with the output graphics, particularly with equations. Equations are converted to images in the HTML output (and in most non-PDF outputs I've tested), but the images are so blurry and poorly rendered that they can't be used. In the Style Mapping settings, the JPEG resolution option only goes up to 100! I've tried multiple setting changes and it only gets worse, not better.

Is there some way to increase the equations output resolution or is this a known issue for which Adobe has no solution yet? 

[Bob_Niland · Accepted solution]

Are you using the legacy FM Equations feature, or XML (MathML, MathFlow, MathType)?

As far as I know, the legacy Eqs always export to HTML as raster images, which is rather less than ideal.

[Melony28324205huex]

Thanks for the response! It must be the legacy version (we go to Insert > Equations instead of Insert > MathML Equation). This is definitely less than ideal. We can work with images, but they need to be decent quality so people can read them. Is there no way to improve the resolution in the output? Or a way to easily convert the legacy equations to MathML?

[Bob_Niland]

re: Is there no way to improve the resolution in the output?

As I recall, there's a choice of raster formats, and some of the workflow options might allow a higher possible resolution, but equations as raster is just sad, in an era where their semantics and text representation would ideally just be preserved into the deliverables.

Converting FM Eqs to XML has been asked about before, but I'm not quickly seeing a solution.

There may also be a further issue with MathFlow in FM, as FRMAKER-11189 seems to still be open.

If I needed to deal with equations these days, I'd probably rely on an external MathML editor, and import whatever XML, or at least SVG, output from that seemed to be satisfactory.

[Bob_Niland]

Just playing with the matter a bit, I tried using the OpenOffice Math (.odf) editor. The user interface is very much like FM's Equation Editor, but with more features. As to getting an equation into FM from that (and perhaps from other MathML editors):

• FM (FM2020, unstructured, anyway) cannot import .xml at all.
• Although it appears that FM can import ".mml", that's almost certainly expected to be Maker Markup Language, and not XML Math ML.
• ODF can't save-as or export SVG. Other MathML editors might be able to.
• ODF can save-as PDF, and that can be imported into FM, cropped and rendered.
• From FM:
  ☑ To PDF, the glyphs survive as text by default.
  To HTML5, on a rough test, the equation went out as PNG … high res PNG, but still raster. It haven't checked to see if that could be modified.

[ashrae-editor]

Bob, do you happen to know where one can specify the choice of raster formats? I'm having the same issue as the original poster. Would love to be able to export to higher-resolution versions--even rasterized--at a reusable resolution.

Thanks!

[Bob_Niland]

I haven't tested to see what these do, but there are two menus worth a look:

Edit 🞃 Preferences…
Global » Graphics
Raster Images DPI in HTML Output [300🞃]

File 🞃 Utilities » HTML Setup…
[Options…]
File Format for Images:

○GIF  ○JPEG  ⦿PNG

[ashrae-editor]

Ah, I'm using an older version that doesn't include these features. Might be time to upgrade.

Thanks, Bob.

[Bob_Niland]

ashrae-editor: Ah, I'm using an older version that doesn't include these features. Might be time to upgrade.

My recollection is that similar menus are in older versions, but they may be buried in different locations.

The current version of FM might enable MathML (or not, if FRMAKER-11189 hasn't been resolved).

[Bob_Niland]

Just to hang these remarks where they might be searched on, I was just playing around with the legacy Eq palette in FM2020, and discovered that, to PDF output, FM is rendering Equation special characters and operator symbols
  as BMP Unicode, in PUA space (U+F0xx range),
and not, as I might have expected,
  as Latin1 codepoints with font Symbol applied.
Interesting. Here's an example:

In legacy FM, using character ⊗ in user text would have been:
Latin1 "Ä" (\xC4) with codepage/overlay font Symbol applied (circlemultiply).

In FM8 or later, one might have expected the Eq palette to use:
⊗ U+2297 CIRCLED TIMES
(and all the instances of ⊗ in this reply are U+2297)

But what FM2020 renders into PDF is:
⊗ U+F0C4 {unnamed Private Use Area codepoint}
and presumably with an embedded font with the glyph for that. The C4 is likely not coincidental.

Now, for extra weird, the FM7 (2002, pre-Unicode) Character_Sets.pdf document, which, based on the metadata, was authored in FM6, contains a ⊗ character that's encoded in that PDF as: U+2297 (the proper Unicode for that character). So some Unicode work must have been going on for FM well prior to FM8.

Why didn't the Eq palette shift to stock Unicode at FM8? Possibly because no font at that time cleanly populated all the needed code points, but perhaps more seriously because at least one of the needed code points was above U+FFFF (into the SMP code space, U+10000 & up), which FM didn't support then … and still doesn't (FRMAKER-10976).