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Graphic outlines disappear in Published .chm file

Explorer ,
Feb 03, 2017 Feb 03, 2017

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I am using FM2015 in a Win 7 environment.

Sometimes a screenshot of a UI does not capture a border around the area of interest. If I put the screenshot into a document, the elements of the UI are poorly separated from the surrounding text. To set it off, I select the screenshot and the click the outline icon in the graphics toolbox. A line appears around the figure. It's usually 1.0 pt by default, and I change it to 0.5 manually.

This outline does not survive the conversion to .chm files. (I've greatly magnified the .chm and indeed there is no outline even at high magnification.)

I see that I can set a universal outline in the Settings that would apply to every graphic, but I don't want that for every image. Does anyone have a way to preserve the outlines I've put around individual graphics?

Thanks.

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LEGEND ,
Feb 03, 2017 Feb 03, 2017

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The only certain way to have the border outline appear in all output formats from FM is to create it in the graphic file before importing to FM. Depending upon which screen capture program you're using, this could be a fairly trivial thing to do. However, if you have a large library of existing graphics, then it will be a bit of a PITA.

The altenative in FM is to create the outline using the rectangle drawing tool. FM will rasterize onto the image when creating the output.

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Explorer ,
Feb 03, 2017 Feb 03, 2017

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Thank you, Arnis. Arrrghh. Sounds like I will be doing some work in SnagIt, which won't be too bad. Far less painful than drawing rectangles around each figure in FrameMaker, though!

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Community Expert ,
Feb 04, 2017 Feb 04, 2017

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Arnis: The altenative in FM is to create the outline using the rectangle drawing tool. FM will rasterize onto the image when creating the output.

Rasterized even if the image is SVG?


In newer FMs SVG is supposedly able to be passed through to the HTML as the XML that it is. Even with a raster source image, it would be nice to avoid having the border rasterized as well.

Theoretically, this seems possible, if the client CHM viewer supports SVG (and older ones don't):

  • I see that SVGs can contain raster data, as embedded<img>tags.
  • tags can contain in-line<img src="data:image/…, which would avoid resulting in an external link.

So, with suitable tools, one could

â–º paste the raster image into an SVG editor,
â–º add the border in the SVG, as vector,
â–º save it all as a single SVG,

â–º import it into the FM document, then
â–º cross your fingers and run the workflow to CHM.

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Explorer ,
Feb 06, 2017 Feb 06, 2017

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Hi, Bob.

Very interesting!

We use pngs mostly, with some jpegs thrown in.

Is the svg method preferable (in the viewability and clarity of the border) to the method of adding the border in SnagIt?

Thanks.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 06, 2017 Feb 06, 2017

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re: Is the svg method preferable (in the viewability and clarity of the border)...

Only if it works

and I don't have a version of FM new enough to support testing SVG pass-thru.

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