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What is a text symbol, what does it do (other than mess with my doc)?

Explorer ,
Apr 27, 2010 Apr 27, 2010

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I am working with FM8 in Tech Comm Suite 1 on Windows XP.

Some of my docs have text symbols sprinkled liberally throughout the text.  I know you can select the option not to view the text symbols, but they still show up in FM and PDFs and RoboHelp and play havoc with the spacing.

  1. What are text symbols?
  2. What purpose do they serve?
  3. How can you make sure they aren't inserted when creating a doc?
  4. Is there any way to get rid of them easily?

Thanks for the help that I know will soon be coming.

M

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Formatting and numbering

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Advisor , Apr 27, 2010 Apr 27, 2010

I just re-read your description that

>> The red text is caused by a text symbol (the one that looks like a left  parens) that displays on the line following the red text. <<

I think you're mistaking FM's tab symbol for a left-facing paren.

Also, I suspect the red text was a font override (or it was interpreted as a font override) when the content was imported from wherever it came from, it's just the proximity to the tab character that makes it seem as if they're cause/effect. Or it could be a nam

...

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Guide ,
Apr 27, 2010 Apr 27, 2010

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In FrameMaker, the term text symbol refers to characters that take up space in the document but do NOT print. These characters include the end-of-paragraph symbol, the space, the tab, nonbreaking space, nonbreaking hyphen, manual line break, etc. Showing them in FrameMaker is a matter of taste and work style. Whether you show them in FrameMaker or not, they do not print.

If you are seeing them in a PDF, then they may have been entered as the characters that are used to display the text symbols on screen. For example, the end of a paragraph is displayed on screen with the pilcrow sign ¶.

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Advisor ,
Apr 27, 2010 Apr 27, 2010

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Text symbols show up in your PDFs? That's ummmm ... very unusual, they definitely shouldn't show up in output files, PDFs or help projects.

Can you give an example of one, maybe post a small screen capture from a PDF (I believe the camera icon in the forum still works to paste in a screenshot).

Text symbols are used in a lot of apps, e.g. word processors, too, to show an end of paragraph or a line break, tabs, or other essential formatting information.

In FM's case, they show where markers are inserted, where tables or graphics are anchored, or where tabs are located, and so on. You can't get rid of FM's text symbols except if you were deleting the feature, e.g. if you delete a table then its text symbol is also deleted. Even so, there are =always= symbols in an FM doc, even a completely empty document would have the end-of-flow symbol (which is this: § )

Do you create your content directly by typing in FM, or do you import from other apps, e.g. from Word?

There are often extra symbols after importing from another app because the import filter creates "erroneous" symbols when it doesn't know how to handle some formatting from the other application. Even so, they shouldn't show up in PDF or help output.

Sheila

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Explorer ,
Apr 27, 2010 Apr 27, 2010

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Okay I may have misstated my problem.  The text symbols themselves do not display

in PDFs, however, they make their presence known by putting gaps in words and ruining the spacing of paragraphs as noted in the examples below.  The red text is caused by a text symbol (the one that looks like a left parens) that displays on the line following the red text. text_symbol.gif

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LEGEND ,
Apr 27, 2010 Apr 27, 2010

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The FM textsymbols are "zero-width", so I suspect that you don't have the maker.ini setting of "DisplayUsingPrinterMetrics=On" set. It is off by default.

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Explorer ,
Apr 28, 2010 Apr 28, 2010

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Actually it is already set to On.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mary K. Greer

Information Developer - Learning Management Solutions

Intelligent Automation Solutions Client Services

407.771.8187

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Advisor ,
Apr 27, 2010 Apr 27, 2010

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Wow, you've got a bazillion useless tabs littered through the content (the flattened  right angle in front of so many of the words). That would drive me absolutely buggy, not only do they litter the screen, making it hard to read, they could easily make it very confusing to actually set up a paragraph format with tabs that work as you expected.

Extra tabs are often a result of importing content from some other app because the import filter sometimes converts end-of-line symbols to tabs, although it's rare to see such a huge number in a single sentence.

If the content was imported from somewhere then I'd say you definitely should track down how to get rid of them before the import stage.

I can certainly see why you'd want to work with text symbols off, with that many to contend with!

Sheila

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Explorer ,
Apr 28, 2010 Apr 28, 2010

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No, I don't believe they are tabs and this information was not imported from any other app.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mary K. Greer

Information Developer - Learning Management Solutions

Intelligent Automation Solutions Client Services

407.771.8187

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Guide ,
Apr 28, 2010 Apr 28, 2010

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Mary,

Sheila's point is that they ARE tabs. So, if they are not supposed to be there, delete them.

The content of the red text seems to imply that you are working with a structured document, namely that there cannot be text outside a <P> element. I have seen EDDs that display error content when something is not right in the document. This document may have been an unstructured Frame file that was converted to structured and then not cleaned up. Hence all the tabs and incorrectly structured content.

Van

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Explorer ,
Apr 28, 2010 Apr 28, 2010

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Okay, looks like the general consensus is that they are tabs. Now is there an easy way to find them all and delete them?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mary K. Greer

Information Developer - Learning Management Solutions

Intelligent Automation Solutions Client Services

407.771.8187

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Participant ,
Apr 28, 2010 Apr 28, 2010

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Find: \t

Change:

Cheers

--

Yves Barbion

www.scripto.nu

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Advisor ,
Apr 27, 2010 Apr 27, 2010

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I just re-read your description that

>> The red text is caused by a text symbol (the one that looks like a left  parens) that displays on the line following the red text. <<

I think you're mistaking FM's tab symbol for a left-facing paren.

Also, I suspect the red text was a font override (or it was interpreted as a font override) when the content was imported from wherever it came from, it's just the proximity to the tab character that makes it seem as if they're cause/effect. Or it could be a named character tag that's applied to the text that colors it red.

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Advisor ,
Apr 29, 2010 Apr 29, 2010

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To clarify, text symbols are one of FrameMaker's visual guides that can be optionally displayed in a FrameMaker document window to indicate the location of something else. A text symbol appears as a special character, but never prints or appears in PDF. However, the represented object may indeed affect the way the published document appears. As explained in the FM 9 User Guide, there are text symbols for an end of paragraph, end of flow, tab, anchored frame, table anchor, marker, forced return, equation alignment point, nonbreaking space, discretionary hyphen, and suppress hyphenation. You turn text symbols on and off with the View > Text Symbols command. Doing so does not affect the content of your document; it just helps you locate where the represented objects occur.

Thus, the problem you are having is not text symbols per se, but the object represented by a text symbol. As others have commented, the tab character can produce the observed results. Viewing text symbols can help you locate the tab characters. While tab characters can be inserted automatically in an autonumber or, in a structured document, in a prefix or suffix, they can also be entered from the keyboard, by pasting, or by converting a document that contains them from another format. You can find tabs that are not automatic using Edit > Find/Change. Type \t as the text you want to find. If you wish you can do a global change to remove all the tabs in the document or change them all to spaces.

          --Lynne

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Explorer ,
May 03, 2010 May 03, 2010

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Lynne,

Thanks so much for the comprehensive explanation. I'm all straightened out now.

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