A

Anonymous

Answered

Is there a capability for COMMENTS in FM7?

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
July 15, 2009
3 replies
1804 views

Hi, everyone:

Sorry if this is super-basic, but I'm returning to FrameMaker for the first time in something like three years.

Is there a way to add Word-like "Comments" to an FM7 document, for the author's own use in reviewing, for reminders of issues to question, etc.?

I've identified the option Special > Marker > Comment, and have used the Comment dropdown selection, and entered the text of my question/reminder to myself. I'm guessing I may have succeeded in adding something to the document.

But for the life of me, I can't see the thing, the way you would with Comments turned on via Review > Comments (Markup and all that) in Word.

About the only options I could think of were turning on Text Symbols, and viewing the Master and Reference pages. I knew these were all likely not to be it, and apparently, they're not.

Am I thinking about this Marker > Comment feature all wrong? Is it merely something that can be made to appear in a list produced upon publishing?

If Marker > Comment isn't what I want it to be, then back to my original question:

Is there a way to add Word-like "Comments" to a FM7 document, for the author's own use in reviewing, for reminders of issues to question, etc.?

Thanks,

Lew Yedwab

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Russ Ward

While other suggestions are valid, I'd contend that your best option is to use structured FM and assign special elements for comments. You can then comment to your heart's content and never worry about conditional text assignment, using a plugin like ABCM (disclaimer, my software) or native Frame tools to filter them out before publication.

I would be helpless without the ability to comment my files. I bet 10 - 20% of the text in my files is actually for internal use only.

Russ

Arnis Gubins

Inspiring

Lew,

Another way to insert comments throughout your document, in a manner that you can toggle on or off, is to use Frame's Color View facility, i.e. FM's pseudo-layers. FM has 6 views that you can toggle amongst that allows specific colours to be made invisible, i.e. any object with the selected colours simply disappears from view, but there is no reflow in your document.

If you create anchored frames that hang outside the main flow text frame or outside the column and insert a text frame into the anchored frame, you can then make independent notes to yourself all over the place. Create a paratag for these notes and use a colour (best to create a custom colour that you wouldn't normally use in the document) as an attribute for the paratag. You can then also make a LOR of the comments paratag to give you a hypertext listing to quickly jump to all of your comments in the document/book.

Set the default View (1) to have the custom colour in the Invisible column and then set the last View (6) to have the custom colour visible. Using the keyboard shortcut, you can quickly toggle between seeing your notes and hiding them without the bother of having FM reflow content using conditional text.

<esc> v 1 switches to View 1 (hiding your notes)

<esc> v 6 switches to View 2 (showing your notes)

I've attached a v7 MIF that shows how this works.

Hiding_comments.zip

A

Anonymous

Hi, Arnis:

I get the uneasy feeling I never saw your answer, much less replied and expressed thanks. I apologize. I remember getting another suggestion, that I don't think was yours. I felt like I was too harried at the time to experiment, and am simililarly harried now. However, my need to use some sort of commenting capabilty has grown, and I'm going to try this.

I find myself collaborating with determined non-users of Framemaker, and so FM9's capability for import of PDF Comments may come into play, IF I can sell FM9 to my bosses.

In any event, I am working with FM7 for the time being, and thank you once again for your suggestion.

Best regards,
Lew Yedwab.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

If your comments refer to the entire document and are short, then you can always use the File > File Info screen. I personally use the conditional text because I'm leaving notes to myself all over my current work in progress.

Jeff ;>)

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Art Campbell

Inspiring

The short answer to your question is "No," but you have some work-arounds.

I've always used a really obvious Para tag called Comment and just put notes in the text. I usually make the type red and run it across the sidehead area, and usually number them so it's really obvious. One nice by-product is that you can include them in draft copy's TOCs too, to track them.

I think you could generate a list of Comment Markers, but I've never messed with that capability just because they're less than obvious.

One other place you can make notes to yourself or other writers is on the Reference pages, too.

Art

P

peter minneapolis

Participating Frequently

Other options to use independently or in combination with Art's suggestions are footnotes and conditional text. Hiding conditionalized comments restores the un-annotated text flow. Conditionalizing footnote reference (the footnote's number in the main text) is sufficient to show or hide both the reference and the footnote at the bottom of the text column as well.

Reference Pages store material that FM uses for various purposes. For example, named graphic frames that are designated in the Paragraph Designer > Advanced > Frame Above and Frame Below, to be pulled in above or below paragraphs. Art's suggestion is to create a text frame on a reference page in which you type your notes. Another disadvantage, in addition to Art's point that it's not obvious to a user, is that these notes don't relate to a specific page.

Another approach is to create text frames on Master Pages and conditionalize the comments. As with Reference Pages, these are not page-specific. However, one great use of this method is to identify which Master Page is applied to each body page. This may be more useful to template designers than to users, but by using a dedicated condition, such as "MasterPageName," you can show/hide these identifiers separately from other comment conditions.

HTH

Regards,

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

R

Russ Ward

Legend

Hi, Russ:

As I've said, I've only returned to any sort of serious use of FrameMaker very recently.

At the risk of embarrassing myself, how big a deal is Structured FrameMaker? I think I've already seen it as an option in my FM7 installation. Is it an installation option (I guess meaning a different product) or just the option for a new, different kind of document?

I should be checking these things myself, and will, but thought I'd elicit some additional thoughts that might answer questions I know will come up in the next 20 minutes.

With a project pressing, I don't even know if I'd have time to really get into this. Heck, for that matter I should be using FM9, shouldn't I ?

Thanks again.

Hi Lew,

Structured FrameMaker is everything that unstructured FrameMaker is, with a layer of structural metadata applied to your documents that provides a wide variety of benefits. These benefits include automated format control, superior editing tools, and the ability to leverage structural metadata for advanced conditional text and text inset single-sourcing activities. You don't need a special version of FrameMaker... all structure tools are included in the main product.

It takes a little bit of time to get the hang of it, but the rewards are immense. There are a wide variety of ways to approach this, but most center around learning about EDDs (Element Definition Documents), the entity that defines and controls structure for a document. Any unstructured document can become structured with an EDD that is designed to work with its template.

There are a few "out-of-the-box" EDDs and templates designed to work with them, most notably DITA and DocBook. This may be a way to get started and indeed may end up being the path to a fully structured workflow. Or, you may choose to develop your own custom EDD that is more closely oriented to your needs. DITA and DocBook are very complicated structures and can be somewhat intimidating to the new user, but there are many advantages to adhering to a standard in widespread use. In any case, it can never hurt to tinker with some EDDs and get the feel for how they work.

Once you have your documents structured, you will have the option to export them to XML. You may never need to do this, but it is a very strong step towards content portability if you think you might migrate out of FrameMaker some day.

There is a document that installs with Frame in the OnlineManuals (or similar) directory called the Structure Developers Guide. While not an exciting read, it tells you just about everything you need to know about EDD development and conversion to structure. My recommendation would be to start there. Perhaps it might also help to fish around the canned templates that install with Frame and tinker with the structured templates that are provided.

In any case, I'd strongly encourage you to look into it. Even if you never use any advanced single-sourcing features, structured FM will save you much time with routine busywork that you may not even realize you are wasting time with now. Plus it will add bullets to your resume that really mean something. My honest opinion is that the avoidance of the structured side of Frame is like buying a Corvette but never taking it out of first gear. There are some workflows where that might not be true, but for the typical author, I believe it is.

Russ

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