FM12 dialogs inaccessible when switching between multi-screen configurations

Report · Oct 06, 2014

I have more screens at work than at home. When working from home I can't see/access dialogs which were last displayed on the additional screen at work. Is there a shortcut key to move the dialog to the primary screen?

Report · Oct 06, 2014

Unfortunately not.The last used positions are written to the user maker.ini file. This would need to be edited to place the Top, Left of each dialogue back into the view of your home configuration.

Report · Oct 06, 2014

Pity.

I suppose that a script solution would be impractical? I don't script but I'm guessing it would require a check each time a dialog is used; which would be complex and introduce a significant overhead.

Ah well. I'll just have to be more disciplined with my Workspaces!

BTW Thanks for the quick response.

Report · Oct 06, 2014

> The last used positions are written to the user maker.ini file.

That doesn't quite compute. Most footnetters don't port their maker.ini back & forth.

Plus, opening behavior seems to be specific to the file and not the user. So it appears that something is being stored in the document files themselves (which is a lot more annoying to hack than an .ini) Assuming we can figure out where it hides, the fix probably involves a MIF round trip and some MIF hacking.

Report · Oct 06, 2014

That sounds scarily beyond my current skill level! Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Report · Oct 06, 2014

>> ... the fix probably involves a MIF round trip and some MIF hacking.

> That sounds scarily beyond my current skill level!

Perhaps not. Just looking at a BOOK file for example, the book dialog coordinates and size is encoded in line 2 when the .book as saved as MIF to a .mif.

If I had the book dialog open on my right screen, the tag might look like:

<BWindowRect 2836 0 345 255>

If I save the file as MIF before traveling to my other machine (which has only a single screen 1920 px wide), I would then need to first use a text editor on the .mif, and change that line to, say:
<BWindowRect 0 0 345 255>

I haven't dug enough to discover what .fm files store where to control origin, size and dialogs/pods.

Report · Oct 06, 2014

Ooookaay... I'll have a look at it when I'm not on such a tight deadline. Thanks

For now, I have a Note-to-Self that my first task, as soon as I get back into the office, is to create a new Workspace with the basic dialogs shown on my laptop screen, not one of the peripherals. At least that should give me a fallback position.

Thanks for the help

Report · Oct 06, 2014

Sue,

Try setting one of the stadard FM Workspace back to the "default" setting. This should put most of the panels back to where they were when FM was first intialized.

AFAIK, the Workspace window positions are not stored in the document files. Are you moving more than just the .fm files between your systems?

Report · Oct 07, 2014

Arnis -

I've already tried resetting back to default but it didn't help with the particular dialog I needed. Although, on reflection, I don't think it was the standard FM Workspace I reset; I think it was a custom one.

I'm not actually moving any files, they are on the local drive of my laptop. At work I hook up to two additional screens, at home it's just one extra. With the laptop screen this gives me a total of three and two displays, respectively.

Error7103 -

Thanks for the info. I will look at it when I get a few minutes. I suspect that it's very easy to get distracted by trying to delve into this puzzle, and I don't dare get hooked right now!

I'm back in the office now, so I'll set up a fallback Workspace.

Thanks for all the help, folks. It's much appreciated.

Report · Oct 07, 2014

Sue,

The window positions are in your local maker.ini found in:

C:\Users\<user login name>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\FrameMaker\12\maker.ini

Look for the this section in the file and adjust the first two locations entries (top, left in pixels) of any dialogs that fall on the third monitor:

[DialogLayout]

MakerWin=3, -1, -1, -1, -1, 369, 147, 1297, 734

ConsoleWin=2, -32000, -32000, -1, -1, 0, 0, 732, 398

RMViewLeftDocked=425, 1071

Equation=270, 330

TemplateBrowser=0, 20

As you suggest, creating custom workspaces for each environment is the way to go. If you ever need to move things back (in case you fall back to a single monitor), then editing the maker.ini file is the alternative.

Report · Oct 07, 2014

Thanks, Arnis

That's very helpful.

Report · Oct 06, 2014

> I haven't dug enough to discover what .fm files store where to control origin, size and dialogs/pods.

The main window stuff is in the section starting

<Document

which is located just after the Xref format catalog.

Don't know about the pods and dialogs.

On the whole, as a routine workflow, it's probably less effort to set the workspace to some portable configuration before saving out the file for footnetting. But if you forget, it's worth knowing the MIF hacks, because you should at least be able to open a .book or a .fm and re-save it as .mif, even if you can't get to any other useful dialogs/pods.