This happens when the complete paragraph is assigned the red color. As soon as the complete paragraph has a character format (or a manual override), it becomes an irregular format (shown with an asterisk*) and cannot be reset by "default paragraph format", because the overridden format has exactly this override as the default. Solution: leave at least one character (e.g. the period at the end of a sentence or a space after the period) without that color/character format, and it can be reset by the "default paragraph format". ... View more

Stefan, I'm not a programmer, so my info may be wrong, but isn't FM still using (in parts) PostScript Level 1 commands and headers, inherited and more or less unchanged from very old versions (back when there was a Mac and Unix version as well)? At least this is what I've understood from the info, development and bug sleuthing during CMYK output development. I somewhat remember that being important regarding the spot color handling or similar… not sure, it has been a long time since then. Bernd ... View more

CMYK PDF output doesn't just fail by design, there has to be a reason why your specific book fails. It usually works, but sometimes images or fonts cause problems which prevent the PDF from being finished. I'd start with saving individual chapters of the book to PDF. Does this work with CMYK enabled? Does a single chapter fail? Bernd ... View more

Starting with FrameMaker 10 (latest updates) and later versions, FrameMaker has an alternative "CMYK engine" for PDF output which does actually write correct CMYK values to PDF. As I understand it, this CMYK engine is partially based on very old postscript programming code, so it may have issues which sometimes require the old Windows PS/RGB output as a fallback option. This may be the case when using some open type fonts which are not getting written correctly to PDF (we have that issue e.g. with the Meta Pro font) , and font related "fake" functions like "bolded, obliqued" also fail to make it to PDF with the CMYK option enabled. Before FM had this option, we always used Acrobat plugins like PitStop to convert to correct CMYK colors. And for images, EPS has always allowed getting correct CMYK output, even through the Windows PS engine, because these files are just pushed through the engine without getting touched by it. ... View more

Just as an addition, since your problem is already solved: we are using FrameMaker versions 8-13 in Parallels VMs on Macs (even one FM7.2 installation, although no longer used). They all work fine with Parallels strictly keeping applications separate. Nothing on Mac automatically using a Win application, and nothing in Windows launching a Mac application. It's fine to share folders, but I never share applications. This might add to the security (regarding virus and other problems) as well. Bernd ... View more

Bob Niland (Error 7103) schrieb: You've got what appear to be two separate problems here; some font issue, and the perpetual FM color management issue. Not quite separate problems. It's the FM CMYK engine having problems with "bolded" and "obliqued" fonts in general. If there is no specific bold or italic font available, the artificial font manipulation (bolded, obliqued) won't make it to the PDF through the "Save PDF" process, as it uses (by default) the CMYK engine. If you switch to RGB output, you'll have the font manipulation preserved, but with RGB colors, same as when printing to PDF (using the Windows RGB postscript engine). Bernd ... View more

Yes. This bug is depending on the font you're using, it does NOT happen with only a few fonts like the Myriad Arabic delivered with FrameMaker 2015. For me it happened with most fonts I'm using, and I've already filed this as a bug, which is currently under investigation: Adobe Bug Base Bernd ... View more

Replying to an old posting, but the problem seems still a current one (FM 13.0.5). To me it looks like a bug, and has nothing to do with being "stupid". Control characters and corresponding functions like switching the text direction should not be depending on the font. Yes, the question mark at the end appears when you're using e.g. "Left-to-Right Override". This happens to me e.g. when using fonts like Helvetica World (Linotype, supports Arabic and Hebrew). Why? It does not happen when using Arial or Adobe Arabic, however, these fonts are not the ones to be used in our documents. What makes the question mark appear? How to get rid of it, without being forced to use inappropriate fonts? The screen shot was created with a German FM version, but refers to the same function as shown above. ... View more

Kapil, thanks. One question bugs me, though. Can you describe a situation in which FM10 is supposed to be "expired"? Is there a built-in "self destruction" mechanism, which automatically will disable FM at any point in time? Or is that an early  implementation (or code leftover) of a (planned) subscription functionality? I'm a little bit worried about what's happening here… Bernd ... View more

Addendum: First test in FM10 shows: hyphenation is not automatically changed/corrected after simply opening the file. However, after globally disabling and re-enabling hyphenation the newly hyphenated words seem to be OK and include the hyphen. Now… is this the rule or just luck? Well, who needs a weekend anyway Bernd ... View more

Oh… you mean the name "read me" means that I'm supposed to read that? Yes, I did (up to version 10), and if I haven't overlooked something, it's not specifically mentioned. And - apart from that - I've really had my fair share of FM bug research work. I'm the one who (after months of testing) originally identified the "FNTCACHE.DAT" file as part of the PDF creation problem, which led to the MS patch 9 months later (after having been a problem for years). Also the CMYK fix implemented in the latest FM 10 patch is (although not solved by me, there are other users earning these merits) partially driven by my constant nagging and testing. So sometimes I just feel the wish to ask a question and find someone who knows the answer. Purely egoistic and lazy, I know. But dreams must be allowed… before starting the next episode of weeks of testing. Bernd ... View more

Thanks, Jeff, I actually have a chunk of identified bad content. I will give it a try, but the doubts will remain without a more or less "official" confirmation. I mean: if it had been fixed, somebody would surely know about this. Bugs usually don't fix themselves by just changing the software version number Bernd ... View more

Jeff, I already have an installed FM10 license, but changing the software version in a collaboration environment (we, doing the tech writing, localization agencies, customers prescribing software versions etc.) is not a simple "let's try it" step. As I'm not able to "see for myself" where the hyphens are missing now, I wouldn't be able to see that in any other software version as well. So it takes at least one complete test procedure starting with the freshly translated MIFs and ending at the complete review by a native speaker. And then there's still no guarantee, because of the extremely randomized nature of this bug. Hyphens may even appear during a save - close - reopen cycle, and they may disappear with correcting a hyphen in a line above. This isn't even reversible by undoing the last action, the result may be two hyphens in two lines, no hyphens in two lines, or one in a randomly choosen line. So my "wish" here is finding someone who actually KNOWS if this "well aged" bug is identified or fixed, which would give me a reason to request that version change for all concerned parties in that process. Bernd ... View more

ReactionAtWork wrote: Latest 10.0.2 patch appears to provide no improvement for printing: 171 page document, printing to Adobe PDF printer...  10 minutes, 45 seconds. Well, "171 pages" doesn't say too much about the document. It makes a huge difference if you have lots of graphics or not. 10 minutes for an EPS-heavy document of this size is not unusual. However, one thing I have noticed with several FM installations in various environments (Parallels VM + Win XP, Parallels VM + Win7, PC + XP): There is a dramatic difference in PDF writing speed depending on WHERE you save the file (local, network) and - if network - which type of network connection you're using. I'm getting the fastest results (by far) from a VM where the server is connected via \\192.168.xxx.xxx\foldername, means: via IP address.  Outperforms local saving as well as e.g. saving via Parallels *.psf connection. I'm not what you'd call an experienced network admin, I have no detailed knowledge about networking at all, but I was really surprised by the resulting speed once we had configured one machine this way. That was speeding up by factor 5-10.  Bernd ... View more

There is no difference for those who don't have Acrobat Pro installed. The PDF  add-on installed with FM also provides a Adobe PDF printer instance. However, I'm pretty sure that the simple solution for now is: use "Save as PDF" and enable the option "convert all CMYK colors to RGB". This should result in a PDF that contains all your original fonts intact. Bernd ... View more

peter at knowhowpro wrote: I'm curious about which FrameMaker heading/footing numbering properties you've found that aren't supported in InDesign. There are some book-level variables that InDesign lacks, such as $volnum and $volname. Peter, you can't define a running header variable that displays the paragraph number of the referenced paragraph format, like "5.2 Setup". The "Running H/F" variable is limited to the text portion of the paragraph. peter at knowhowpro wrote: Some users report problems with InDesign's cross-file cross-references. DTP Tools' commercial Cross-References Pro plug-in for InDesign has all the cross-reference format features that FrameMaker offers, plus some additional features; both FrameMaker and Cross-References Pro's features exceed InDesign's. Yes, InDesign's own xrefs are unusable, when working on a FM-style book with several chapters. The reason is: you can't disable automatic xref updating while working on a chapter. This means, ID constantly opens and closes all referenced documents in the background, which brings the application to a complete halt. Completely unusable, garbage. However, I've successfully used DTP Tools' plugin for this purpose (on > 300 pages manuals with lots of xrefs), because this plugin has an "disable auto-update" option. These xrefs also come through an IDML translation process. Bernd ... View more

Peter already outlined the most important points. This is a one-way street, and the owner of a FrameMaker document won't be happy about the format conversion, I think. Usually these people NEED to have access to the translated files, if only for backup purposes. Technical documentation has some very strict rules sometimes. He wouldn't be happy about Word files, too From my personal experience and tests of the MIF filter: if your FM document is very clean (no style overrides), the result looks very convincing on the first look. However, there are some basic concepts which are handled differently in both applications. One example is space above/below paragraphs. FM always uses the bigger one (but only one), when two paragraphs follow each other. InDesign adds the two values. In order to mimic the FM appearance (when converting to strictly keep the FM layout), the filter creates tons of paragraph style overrides, which makes your target document no longer clean. Or: InDesign doesn't support numberings in header/footer variables (at least up to CS4, don't know about CS5). So if the FM documents has such elements in the header/footer area, it will fail in ID. Next possible problem: cross references. ID's abilities to handle these are much smaller and sometimes unreliable, especially when xrefs point to separate documents (like chapters in a book). On the other hand, a translation process to any language which is supported by FM (which is the majority, as long as it's not about R2L languages like Arabic or Hebrew) is very simple and straightforward. Feed FrameMaker MIFs into Trados (or another TM), do the translation in the Tag Editor/Workbench, and export translated MIFs again. The result should be a very clean FM document, which doesn't mean any more efforts for formatting than a strict InDesign based (INX, IDML) translation workflow. Yes, I'd call it a high risk you're taking there, just because YOU know ID better, me thinks… I'm through all that. The manuals we write are usually translated into 20-30 languages, including e.g. Arabic (that's what I needed the ID versions for), all European languages, and Chinese and Japanese. We're doing all the final DTP work after translation. I'd avoid changing the format whenever possible, it's twice the work. Bernd ... View more

What a bummer… you are right, it's still broken in FM9. I didn't think of that, because I've always been using the FrameScript table sorting, which preserves the markers. Sorry for any confusion Bernd ... View more

If I remember correctly, this was already fixed in FM8. FM9 also works as expected in this regard. Bernd ... View more

This information is somewhat potentially misleading. An index consists of two parts: the individual index markers, placed in the chapter files the generated and formatted index, using these markers to create its content The reusable part is the index file itself, containing the page layout, paragraph formats and entry definitions (on the reference page). You may reuse such an index file for a new book, however, if this new book (and its chapter files) don't contain the index markers of the other book, nothing will show up in your new index. If you have used the old chapter files (containing index markers) for the new book, it will work. The FM help file just refers to reusing a complete index file as a pre-formatted template for a new index in a new book, so you don't have to rebuild (or import) all the layout information. The contents of this file still needs index markers in the chapters. What the help file says: if you have a book file open and want to add an index, do this with the corresponding command now you have an index listed in the book file, however, the file doesn't really exist until you generate it for the first time now copy your (correctly formatted) index file from whereever it sits to the folder that contains your new book files rename this file to the name which is listed as index file in the book When generating an index now, the book finds the copied file, and writes the index marker content into this file, thus using the correct formatting. If you left these steps out, the first generation of an index creates an unformatted index. Bernd ... View more

janice swanson wrote: Please don't request the removal of "File > Save As PDF"… I'd prefer to see more users requesting that this feature gets fixed to work as advertised. This is the only way to get it fixed. Vote with your feet… Bernd ... View more

feline_1973 wrote: What is the point of Adobe, for all these years, putting two different ways to make a PDF in the Frame GUI, one of which can screw things up and is seemingly deprecated by so many people? It's perverse and makes no sense! Because the other (old) option screws things up by design… using the Win GDI and creating gaudy colored RGB PDFs. Bernd ... View more

AndersonEconGroup wrote: For the save as .pdf issue -- are you getting a "system fonts" error during the conversion process? We ran into this, and have resolved it by going to the Adobe .pdf printer's "Printing Preferences" and turning off the "rely on system fonts only; do not use document fonts" selection. No, this has nothing to do with the bug I've mentioned. It's a matter of fact that when saving to CMYK PDF, a large number of current OTF fonts fails to be written to PDF, and appears as Times New Roman. This bug isn't even limited to certain font families, but happens also within a family (e.g., some fonts of the Helvetica Neue LT W1G family work, some don't, Helvetica World (LT) works, Helvetica Neue LT COM Condensed doesn't, in a reproducible manner). Bernd ... View more

No built-in function, but a framescript: http://www.i-frame.itl.info/en/feature-description/i-frame-modules/extended-pack/report-paragraph-and-char-formats.html However, neither framescript nor this script are free, but both are definitely worth their price. I don't know if or when there will be an ExtendScript solution for FM10. Bernd ... View more

Mike Wickham wrote: …Here is a link to a PDF showing the user's test results with several fonts: http://www.meissner-dokuteam.de/Files/Frame/Unicode_Fonts_Test_fm903_0 91118_cmyk_rgb.pdfSo there may be some problems due to the Helvetica Neue fonts, rather thandue to FrameMaker. Mike, this is a total misunderstanding of what my PDF displays. There is no general problem with the Helvetica Neue font, the document above only demonstrates what the crappy FM9 CMYK engine does to quite a number of OpenType fonts. These fonts all work properly with any other application including FM8.  With the font in question being a converted Mac font, the problem is solved anyway, but I don't want readers to misunderstand my PDF. It's all about the FM9 CMYK engine, otherwise the Helvetica Neue is a perfectly working font. Bernd ... View more

I have no experience with the arabic Word version (but quite a lot with Arabic documents in general), but I'm pretty sure it should work. However, there are options/preferences you can set for Copy/Paste in the Maker .ini, which may lead to different results or even failures. I don't recall the default order, but AFAIK the "OLE 2" entry is pretty much at the beginning, which generally is a bad choice. I've changed this sort order in my *.ini file to: ClipboardFormatsPriorities=UNICODE TEXT, TEXT, MIF, RTF, FILE, OLE 2, EMF, META, DIB, BMP, MIFW Note the "UNICODE TEXT" entry at the beginning, which makes it the preferred format for pasting text from other applications. Maybe this is also the solution for the collaboration between FM and the arabic Word version. Bernd ... View more

This has been discussed in another place already. If it was taken out - being a feature actively sold with FM9 and FM10 - would all FM9 users get a refund then? Just remember, the FM feature page said and still says things like "and pristine PDF output with CMYK support". Which simply isn't true. ... View more

Jeff_Coatsworth wrote: Just tested printing a .fm doc in FM10 straight to PDF and using the Save As PDF - they both work fine for me. You may have some Unicode font issues with whatever fonts you are using (just a guess). Jeff, no, he doesn't. He just experiences what everybody can experience trying to output a CMYK PDF: a whole lot of modern OTF fonts doesn't work and is written as Times New Roman to PDF. All of these fonts work flawlessly with any other application including all Adobe applications. This has been a bug in FM9 and isn't fixed in FM10, as the whole CMYK engine is as buggy and crappy as before. I did the upgrade to FM9 mainly for the CMYK "feature", and will pass on FM10 for exactly this reason. Bernd ... View more