FM8->HTML: Why are images so small and unreadable?

Report · Oct 21, 2009

Hello,

I am using FrameMaker 8 and generating HTML output for use in a customized help system.

The HTML generation is working more or less (although there seem to be a lot of bugs with the mapping on the reference pages .. often my changes are ignored, and I have to update them several times before I get the mapping I requested)

Anyway, all of my images are imported by reference into the document and most are scaled to about 50%.

When converted to HTML (I'm saving as PNG) the new images get scaled to 50% instead of using the original size of the image. This makes the images unusable, which means my help system will be unusable as well.

How do I get the original image size after conversion?

FYI: I did enable "Copy Files Imported by Reference" in the HTML options for the first chapter of my book. I assumed this would solve the problem. But I see no difference with that option enabled or disabled. Or, is that just another buggy behaviour with my settings being ignored again?

I would appreciate some insight on how to get a proper conversion out of FM8 to HTML with images that can be read by my users.

Thanks!

Report · Oct 21, 2009

Unfortunately, FM's HTML output is somewhat less than stellar and you're probably not going to get things much better than you have already. You might want to have a look at mif2go from Omni Systems ( http://www.omsys.com/dcl/mif2gopg.htm ) - much, much better output and control.

Report · Oct 21, 2009

Hi Arnis,

Thanks for your reply.

I have started to come to the conclusion that this is a WIGIWIG situation (What I Got is What I Get) 🙂

And, I will go out on a limb and assume that this is an intentional marketing strategy from Adobe in order to attempt to up-sell users in my situation to RoboHelp or some of their other Suite-Solutions.

I have also just discovered Mif2Go and am currently running some tests.

The images look great, but I am now presented with a new issue:

A nice thing about FrameMaker 8 HTML conversions is that it supports automatic creation of new HTML files based on Paragraph Styles through the HTML Mapping table.

So far, I don't see that option in Mif2Go.

We're building a proprietary Help System, so, all I need to do is export my FrameMaker content as multiple HTML pages with images, and our system will take care of everything else.

So, FrameMaker is very flexible for that, but since the images are re-compressed, the HTML output is essentially useless, and I'm wondering why they would have spent all of that development time for a feature that can not be deployed in a production environment.

Mif2Go appears to be a suitable (not to mention cheap) alternative, but if I cannot break my content in to HTML files by Paragraph Tag, that solution is also a no-go.

I don't need RoboHelp because:

- We don't need to rely on a fully embedded help system since we're handling the entire Help framework ourselves

- I have no interested in shelling out a thousand bucks just so I can get my images to be legible in my final output.

I'd appreciate any other solutions on perspectives on this issue.

I'm also curious to know if anyone actually uses the FrameMaker HTML conversion tools in a real environment? If so, please share how you get around these show-stopper shortcomings of these tools.

Thanks.

Report · Oct 21, 2009

Look at the section on "Designating split points" in the mif2go documentation:

You can designate places to split a FrameMaker file based on the occurrence of any of the
following:
Paragraph or character formats in text on page 514
Paragraph formats in tables on page 514
Page breaks on page 515
Custom FrameMaker markers on page 515
Hypertext alert markers on page 515

Report · Oct 21, 2009

Fantastic.

I've only had the Mif2Go Demo package for about 30 minutes, and didn't get to that portion of their own help files.

That basically closes the deal then. Since Mif2Go will even allow me to place a custom marker anywhere in the FrameMaker document, that makes it even more powerful than the FM HTML Mapping Tables on the Reference Pages.

And, frankly, I've been fighting with those mapping tables for the past 2 days. For some reason, FrameMaker does not always update my changes to the HTML Output options, and I keep wasting 10-20 minutes at a time waiting for a conversion process that doesn't give me the output I requested.

And then I've spun my wheels for another day trying to resolve the issue of the scaling images.

So, I'm going to really push the demo of Mif2Go now, but, at the surface, this looks like the solution we're looking for.

Thanks for your help, Arnis.

Cheers,

Jeremy

Report · Oct 21, 2009

Jeremy,

You might like it even better once you plow through the documentation - there are sooooo many options it will make you head spin at times, but once it's configured, it's lightning fast and just works. For tech support, the creator (your namesake) Jeremy Griffith is phenomenal.