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Question

FM9: Possible to make "fit window to page" the default?

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
May 16, 2011
3 replies
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I'm using FM9, structured, on Windows 7. (My company recently upgraded from FM7.0.) In FM 7.0, my documents seemed to remember the last zoom I had set, and if I saved them having set "Fit Window to Page", the next time I opened the document that setting would be in effect.

This doesn't seem to be the case with FM9. Every time I open a document, its window fills the screen, and I need to manually fit the page to my preferred zoom (100 or 90%) from the Zoom status bar menu. There are a lot of options for tweaking preferences for windows - I have not selected to open documents as tabs, for example - and I wonder whether a preference setting is preventing the fit window to page setting from being remembered per document, or whether there is any other way I can make that the default for opening documents.

Thanks very much for your help.

-- garyZ

This topic has been closed for replies.

J

JohannesKrueger

Inspiring

Gary,

My reply is a bit late, so I hope you're still watching the thread, or that you've found a solution on your own.

The following applies to FM8, but maybe the same is true in FM9:

In the maker.ini file, there's a variable called MakerWin that controls the state (normal, maximized or minimized) and the position of document windows. The variable is documented in the Customizing_Frame_Products.pdf in the Documents folder of your FM installation (at least in FM8, can't speak of FM9). Here's an excerpt:

The values for MakerWin specify normal, minimized, and maximized positions. The first value determines which position to use; its value is 1 for normal, 2 for minimized, or 3 for maximized. The next six values are pairs of x and y offsets that specify the different window positions; the first pair specify the minimized position, the second pair specify the maximized position, and the third pair specify the normal position. The last two values are the normal window width and height.

Quit FM before editing the maker.ini file, and see whether the change has any effect in FM9 next time.

Johannes

G

GaryMZimmermanAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks Johannes,

I gave that a try, but it doesn't do quite what I'm looking for in FM9.

It controls the initial positioning of the FM window, but does not

directly control the size and position of the subwindows I open for,

say, a chapter in a book.

I say directly, because after playing with those maker.ini settings for

a bit, what I found was that the initial subwindow size is indeed

determined or influenced by the size of the main FM window, and always

seems to initially open sized to be within the FM window.

This, even though that with FM9 the size of the subwindows are not

limited by the size of the FM window. That means that if I use the .ini

settings to halve the initial width of the FM9 main window on my wide

monitor, when I open a document it will open within that half-width

window. If I then use the "Fit Window To Page" zoom command, the

subwindow will resize itself to be wider than that main FM9 window.

(I also needed to be careful to edit the correct maker.ini file, as

there is one in the FM program directory, and one in my own user

directory. The settings in my "own" maker.ini file take precedence, so

something else to look out for.)

What I would like is to have FM open maximized on my monitor, but the

subwindows to open sized to "fit window to page" at a zoom of 100%.

(Actually, I have two wide monitors, but I start out working on one, and

move some palettes and such to the second as I need more space.)

I don't know where the subwindow size settings are stored, and they

might be stored with the document, or the behavior of how they open

might simply be hard coded into the FM9 GUI code.

I also notice that when I open a file by itself, it can open differently

than when I open it together with all the files/chapters in a book.

(Open the book file first, then hold down Shift to see the Open All

Files In Book option on the File menu.) That is confounded by the fact

that one of the Interface Preferences is whether to open the chapters as

tabs in a single subwindow or to open them individually. (Opening them

individually is when I get that tunnel effect from each chapter opening

in a window that is smaller than the previous chapter.)

I like choice, but in this case, it seems like they just threw

everything but the kitchen sink in there, and it results in something

less usable for people who don't like to tweak a lot. I DO like to

tweak and customize a lot, but I still have problems with this UI. I'm

hoping the situation with FM 10 is better, and that my company might

upgrade to that soon.

Thanks very much!

-- garyZ

G

GaryMZimmermanAuthor

Known Participant

Still struggling with this, and the possible confounding factors, like differnet interface preference settings. Some online research I've done seems to point to this being a problem in FM9, that is, setting a default zoom and fit for all documents. There are some third-party plugins that say they can do this... but not for FM9. So maybe the answer is "upgrade to FM 10", but that isn't an option for my department at this time.

Further symptoms:

- If I open all chapters in a book together in a single tabbed window, and explicitly set the first document to Fit Window to Page, I get what I want for that document, but as soon as I choose another chapter in anotehr tab, the window widens (I show a single page only), leaving a lot of gray empty window space. I can explicitly set THAT document to Fit Window to Page, but when I click back on the first chapter I was working on, it opens wide; it has lost the Fit Window to Page I originally set for it. Working that way, any time I change tabs, and frequently when I do operations like changing the conditional text that shows, the window containing all the tabs widens. I would like to prevent that if possible.

- Even when working on individual chapters, if I set one to Fit Window to Page (a setting that held, if I subsequently saved the document, in FM7) the setting is not (consistently, it seems) remembered, and the next time I open the single chapter, the window opens wide, or maximized (23" wide monitor) as if it is trying to give me a two-page view, but I'm only working with one page views (my preference because it's what I'm used to).

- Regardless of how the files open individually (sometimes the zoom and fit seems to hold), when I open a book file, then use Open All Files In Book (having set the interface to NOT open all the files as tabs in a single window), I get this bizarre Time Tunnel effect whereby each chapter opens in a window that fits within the bounds of the previous chapter. If the first chapter opens correctly, say 100% zoom and Fit Window to Page, the second opens at 100% zoom, but fits in the first, the third within the second, and if the book has enough chapters, the last chapters are vertically tiny, not showing more than a line or two of text. So I need to manually rearrange and re-fit them all before I work on them. What a pain.

I have to say, the FM9 interface is awfully clunky. I don't know if it's implemented (partly) using Flash or what, but whole book operations like opening or closing all files, saving a book as PDF, sometimes even just switching the conditional text that is shown generally result in a frozen screen and a title bar that indicates "not responding" for a couple of minutes before FM9 gets it's act together and returns (often with windows resized and zoomed). It can be pretty frustrating to work with, and can really slow me down.

I'm using structured FM, but not DITA - in house designed EDD, probably based on docbook, but I'm not sure. FM9 is completely updated with available patches.

I've tried playing with the different Interface Preferences, to see if that helps - variously having FM open files as tabs to share the same large tabbed window, or turning that off to have them open as individual files in individual windows. I still cannot get Fit Window to Page to hold consistently. It's a relatively minor nit, but it is annoying, and gobbles extra time for me to keep resetting the working environment as I like it. I have set up a workspace for myself, but this doesn't seem to include the zoom settings, only the various palettes/panels and their states and positions.

If anyone knows of or discovers a fix to this issue, your help would be much appreciated.

-- garyZ

A

Anonymous

Gary, you've given a thought-provoking description of many of the interface issues I suspect we've all struggled with, bravo for articulating them so clearly. I've been plagued by the "cascading to useless size" window openings too, and also spent far too much unproductive time rearranging windows.

Could you give the specs on your system, just so we can compare as much as possible?

Win7 ( service pack level and whether 32- or 64-bit? )

How much RAM

Video card make / model, and ideally the driver version number. How old is the card? How much video RAM?

You mentioned 23" monitor, what resolution are you running at?

Have you used any utils such as task manager or other system monitors to watch the system processes when FM freezes, to see if you can identify what process might be causing the freeze?

And, finally, with the freeze you describe, have you tried working with an FM interface that does not use the workspace pods? Having pods "active" in the workspace can cause freezes because it seems that FM has to "re-enumerate" the content of the pods constantly, ending up in a varying length tizzy. Getting the workspace fully de-podded for each user can be a bit of a challenge, as the pods can end up sort of hidden but not deactivated.

Sheila

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

Hi Sheila,

Here is some of the information you asked for. I haven't checked what happens when I see that Not Responding, but I suspect that the top job in the Task Manager queue (sorted by CPU utilization) is FrameMaker.exe).

System is a Dell Precision T3500 (Xeon CPU W3503)

Win 7 Ultimate (32-bit)

(I can't tell the SP level. At my company our workstations are updated by our IT department, and from the updates history I see in the Control Panel, I can't tell whether any SPs have been installed, though many Windows updates have been installed for security and such.)

4GB RAM

Video: NVIDIA Quadro FX 580

(Don't know how much video RAM, but I would guess the minimum available with this card.)

Dual 23" monitors, each running at 1680 x 1050 resolution.

The freeze is only temporary, while files are loading into FM.

I haven't tried de-podding the workspace. I have a custom workspace I set up, and keep modifying as I find better places to put the iconized pod buttons, but I also have a problem knowing the difference between a pod, a button, a panel, etc, and whether these things are distinctly different or largely synonyms. I do notice a difference in behavior of the pod-things depending on how I open them, with respect to whether I can open only one at a time in a strip of attached ones (I've shrunk them all to the minimal size icons) versus whether the pod/panel remains open so I can have multiple open at once. Again, too many darned choices and permutations to muddle through and keep straight.

Thanks for your help. I think the solution is to go to FM 10 or whatever FM release after that evolves the GUI to something a little more usable, but I don't have control over which version of FM my department uses.

We only just upgraded to FM9 (and new workstations) from FM7 after many years. Don't know when we'll get the go-ahead to upgrade again. We upgraded to FM9 instead of 10 because we got an upgrade price for FM9 that we wouldn't have gotten for FM 10. Sigh.

-- garyZ

FYI - FM10's no different than FM9 in the GUI look & feel.

A

Anonymous

What specific version of FM are you using, as shown in Help > About. Check the updates to see if there are any updates:

Updates - Adobe - FrameMaker : For Windows

G

GaryMZimmermanAuthor

Known Participant

Hi Sheila,

It's version 9.0p255. I've installed the updates up through update

9.0.4 (strangely, the Adobe site shows that as being p252, so I'm even

more current than that). When I let FrameMaker check (Help > Updates) I

seem to be up to date.

Thanks.

-- garyZ

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