FW: Framers Digest, Vol 6, Issue 25

[Venkatesh]

Hi All,

Shall we use Carlos in FrameMaker. 

Regards,
 
Venkat
 
_ 
 
Venkatesh S.
Software Programmer
Hurix Systems Pvt. Ltd.,
Hurix House,
New No. 34 [Old No. 10], Taylor's Road, 
Kilpauk, Chennai - 600 010. India
PH : +91 44 42284888  Extn:
Fax : +91 44 4228 4899
Mobile: +919841290282
Web: www.hurix.com





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RE: Text appearing in fm file, but not in pdf

[Jim Light]

Nathan,
I had this problem a short time ago.

The problem of vanishing table heading content is a bug in FrameMaker.
The workaround is to print to a PostScript file and then distill that.
It works like a charm.

The bug manifests itself when you have the combination of shaded cells,
PDF tagging is turned on in PDF setup, and you try to Save as PDF. I
need the shading and tagging, so I used the workaround. I assume that
turning off tagging or unshading would also work.

Jim


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Nathan Cullen
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 5:16 AM
To: framers@lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Text appearing in fm file, but not in pdf

Hi everyone,

I'm using structured Framemaker 7.1, and I have a problem I know I 
solved a couple of years ago, but here it is again. New job, new 
template, same problem. I have some tables in my documents that 
incorporate shading. In my .fm file the the tables appear perfectly 
fine; however, when the file is converted to a .pdf, the text doesnt 
appear in some of the cells in which there is shading. I know this is 
just some formatting glitch, because I solved it before, but for the 
life of me I cant figure out how.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards

Nathan Cullen
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Re: Freeframers wiki page

[Jeremy H. Griffith]

On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 07:04:06 -0500, Sharon Smithe 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

While looking for Framemaker resources, I found this site:

http://www.freeframers.org/wiki/

It hasn't been updated recently, but it seems like it could be a
useful resource for the Frame community.  Is there a reason nobody is
using it, or is it just be lack of interest?

Wikis seem to require a *very* large group of users
to reach critical mass.  I started that one years ago,
then waited for them to come...  ;-)  Now and then
people find it, get excited, and start adding to it.
Then something else beckons.  g  By all means, add
what you can; *you* may be the hundredth monkey!  ;-)

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, Free Framers list admin
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Creating Popup menus in FrameMaker

[Daniel Emory]

--- Carol J. Elkins [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
 Good post, Dan. However, I'm trying to visualize
your
 statement, ...clicking on this button produced a 
 menu of links to major subject areas... The 
 button part I understand, the menu of links I'm
 struggling with. A popup menu? If so, could you tell
 me how you achieve the menu of links functionality?

You asked how a popup menu is created in FrameMaker.
Here’s the procedure: (steps 1 and 2 are used only if
a button in a background text frame on a master page
is used to open the menu. If, instead, you want to
open the menu from highlighted anchor text within a
body page, proceed directly to step 3).

1. On a reference page, draw a text frame. Inside that
text frame draw a button, and use the drawing tool’s
text button to insert, inside the button, a
descriptive name for the button.

2. Inside the empty paragraph at the top of the text
frame (not inside the button) insert a hypertext
marker of the form:
popup flowname
where flowname is the name of a text flow of a text
frame you are going to draw on a reference page.

3. Alternatively, you can skip steps 1 and 2, and
instead insert the popup flowname hypertext marker
into highlighted text (i.e., the hypertext anchor)
within an ordinary body page. NOTE: If you are using
structured FrameMaker, it might be advisable to
specify the popup flowname marker in your structure
rules, and define it as an element of type marker.
 
4. On a reference page (I usually create a special
reference page named Popups), draw a text frame and
assign that text frame the same flowname you specified
in step 2 or 3.

5. In the first paragraph inside the text frame
created in step 4, enter, on the top line, the title
of the popup menu (it’ll only appear in the popup menu
on Unix platforms). In the second and succeeding
paragraphs within the menu, type the names of the
items you want to appear on the menu.

6. Immediately following the last letter of each menu
item (other than the title) added in step 5, insert
the appropriate hypertext marker type (most commonly
jump to named destination, but other types may also be
used). The Jump to Named Destination marker has the
form:
 gotolink destination_name
 where destination_name is the
unique name of a newlink hypertext marker
 which you insert in the text
of the applicable content.
However, the hypertext link can also be to a popup
sub-menu, in which case the menu item that refers to
the submenu would be created in step 4 thru 6.
However, a sub-menu cannot reference another popup
menu.

7. If you used the button approach described in steps
1 and 2, copy the text frame containing the button you
created, and paste it as a background text frame on a
master page.

8. Once all that is accomplished, clicking on the
button (or the highlighted text) will open the popup
menu, and the user can then select the desired subject
node from the menu.
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Re: Creating Popup menus in FrameMaker

[Bill Briggs]

At 11:47 AM -0700 4/26/06, Daniel Emory wrote:
--- Carol J. Elkins [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
 Good post, Dan. However, I'm trying to visualize
your
 statement, ...clicking on this button produced a
 menu of links to major subject areas... The
 button part I understand, the menu of links I'm
 struggling with. A popup menu? If so, could you tell
 me how you achieve the menu of links functionality?

You asked how a popup menu is created in FrameMaker.
Here’s the procedure:

 Popups in FrameMaker are a treat. I made a little book for myself once (it had 
all sorts of stuff in it related to work, an address book, and a ton of other 
stuff) and I used it in printed form daily, but it had popups and hyperlink 
buttons for navigation in the software version. It was a great way to get 
around the book. I've used them in a few other places too, sometimes with an 
invisible button, so there was nothing in the printed version. Always loved 
that feature.

 - web
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Re: Creating Popup menus in FrameMaker

[Bill Briggs]

At 1:00 PM -0700 4/26/06, FIONA HANINGTON wrote:
I would *love* to see a sample of this in action - does anyone have one that 
they would be willing to share with me?

I'm sending you a current work in progress that uses this feature.

 - web
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Re: Creating Popup menus in FrameMaker

[Rick Quatro]

Hi Bill,

I agree wholeheartedly, but it's a shame that only FrameMaker users can 
benefit. As Dan said, it would be nice if all of FrameMaker's hypertext 
goodies would convert to PDF.


Rick

Popups in FrameMaker are a treat. I made a little book for myself once (it 
had all sorts of stuff in it related to work, an address book, and a ton 
of other stuff) and I used it in printed form daily, but it had popups and 
hyperlink buttons for navigation in the software version. It was a great 
way to get around the book. I've used them in a few other places too, 
sometimes with an invisible button, so there was nothing in the printed 
version. Always loved that feature.


- web


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Re: A couple (digest) items

[Alan Litchfield]

On Apr 27, 2006, at 12:41 AM, Beck, Charles wrote:

 Is anyone at Adobe listening?



We did have an evangelist from Adobe, but he has been somewhat silent  
on this.


Alan
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Re: Creating Popup menus in FrameMaker

[Bill Briggs]

Yeah, it would be a really great thing to have all of FrameMaker's hypertext 
capabilities survive to PDF. But we'll see a plethora of tiny little 
Photoshop-style pallets before we'll see something useful like what Dan was 
talking about. Makes you wonder what drives the decision mechanism (if there is 
one) regarding software improvements. Once FrameMaker is reduced to a single 
platform, down from the glory days when it was on many. Two great quotes from 
the Wikipedia entry for FrameMaker.

At the height of its success, FrameMaker ran on more than thirteen UNIX 
platforms, including NeXT Computer's NeXTSTEP and IBM's AIX operating systems.

Frame Technology later ported FrameMaker to Microsoft Windows, but the company 
lost direction soon after its release.

- web


At 4:31 PM -0400 4/26/06, Rick Quatro wrote:
Hi Bill,

I agree wholeheartedly, but it's a shame that only FrameMaker users can 
benefit. As Dan said, it would be nice if all of FrameMaker's hypertext 
goodies would convert to PDF.

Rick

Popups in FrameMaker are a treat. I made a little book for myself once (it 
had all sorts of stuff in it related to work, an address book, and a ton of 
other stuff) and I used it in printed form daily, but it had popups and 
hyperlink buttons for navigation in the software version. It was a great way 
to get around the book. I've used them in a few other places too, sometimes 
with an invisible button, so there was nothing in the printed version. 
Always loved that feature.

- web

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growing headers

[Gillian Flato]

I have a running header that reads a head2 and places it in the margin.
Some headers are longer than others and the header is right-aligned. Is
there anyway to make the running header a growing header, meaning, if
the header its reading is long, it moves the header over to the left to
allot space for it? Right now, it just cuts off the text if there isn't
enough room.
 

Thanks,

Gillian Flato

Technical Writer (Software)

NANOmetrics, Inc.

1550 Buckeye Dr.

Milpitas, CA. 95035

(408.435.9600 x 316

7  408.232.5911

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Re: Creating Popup menus in FrameMaker

[Peter Gold]

Hi, Bill, Dan, and all:

At 8:46 PM -0300 4/26/06, Bill Briggs wrote:
Yeah, it would be a really great thing to have all of FrameMaker's 
hypertext capabilities survive to PDF. But we'll see a plethora of 
tiny little Photoshop-style pallets before we'll see something 
useful like what Dan was talking about. Makes you wonder what drives 
the decision mechanism (if there is one) regarding software 
improvements. Once FrameMaker is reduced to a single platform, down 
from the glory days when it was on many. Two great quotes from the 
Wikipedia entry for FrameMaker.


At the height of its success, FrameMaker ran on more than thirteen 
UNIX platforms, including NeXT Computer's NeXTSTEP and IBM's AIX 
operating systems.


Frame Technology later ported FrameMaker to Microsoft Windows, but 
the company lost direction soon after its release.


I'm not sure if you'd find it by digging in Wikipedia, but to put 
your point in context, it helps to know that in the early days of 
unix and FrameMaker, as with the early days of CP/M, each hardware 
manufacturer had a proprietary version of the OS, which required 
software to be written, converted, adapted, or ported to run on it. 
To sell these adamantly-independent hardware platforms, their 
manufacturers like Pyramid, Sequent, CGI, NeXT, and others PAID BIG 
BUCKS to companies like Frame Technology, Sybase, and others whose 
software they wanted to offer to attract customers. NeXT even bundled 
FrameMaker 3.x with its machines.


In its early years, Sun required its resellers to sell a certain 
amount of software and support with each workstation, to avoid having 
resellers compete solely on bottom-dollar hardware prices and leave 
customers with no software and no support. FrameMaker on Solaris was 
a common component in those packages; both companies benefited.


Actually, FrameMaker was ported to Macintosh before Windows, because 
Windows at the time was too wimpy to support it.


While it's easy to point to what FrameMaker still hasn't incorporated 
from the long-standing user wish list, it's pretty remarkable to look 
back all the way to the FrameMaker 2.x era and see how much of the 
product's current productive feature set was built into it so early 
on.


It's quite correct to say that the code base evolved to a point 
that's nearly impossible to maintain, as features have been added and 
refined. This is what's holding back the ability to evolve on any of 
the remaining supported platforms, or those that have been dropped.


While many of us are quite inconvenienced by not having Mac OS X 
FrameMaker, how many users do we hear from who miss FrameMaker on 
Pyramid, Sequent, or NeXT? What's interesting about unix, is that 
it's easy to run FrameMaker on one Solaris machine and serve it to 
whole enterprises of users who connect to it from other unix 
platforms. It's not emulation, dual-boot, or virtual-machine - it's 
just unix.


As far as lack of support for converting the FrameMaker's advanced 
hypertext features - pop-up menus, button matrixes, etc. to other 
distribution formats - mif2go and WebWorks Publisher Professional 
accomplish these behaviors in HTML with somewhat less complex 
preparation in FrameMaker than FrameMaker's own steps require. I 
believe that some of these can also be accomplished in PDF with some 
of Shlomo Perets' tools.


It's half full, IMO. But, like most FrameMaker users, I expect at 
least three-quarters full. Hoping for more...



Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices
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Re: growing headers

[Peter Gold]

Hi, Gillian:

At 5:34 PM -0700 4/26/06, Gillian Flato wrote:

I have a running header that reads a head2 and places it in the margin.
Some headers are longer than others and the header is right-aligned. Is
there anyway to make the running header a growing header, meaning, if
the header its reading is long, it moves the header over to the left to
allot space for it? Right now, it just cuts off the text if there isn't
enough room.


It's a little hard to visualize from your description. When you say 
in the margin, do you mean the top margin, where headers usually 
are placed, or the side margin, where headers sometimes are placed to 
suit specific layout requirements?


For the top margin case, you could change the line from Jaws after 
the shark ate the stern, from  We're going to need a bigger boat, 
to We're going to need a bigger text header frame on the master 
page.


The text is overflowing its text frame. Depending on your needs and 
preferences, you could either make the text frame wider, to keep the 
long heading on one line, or you could make it taller, to allow the 
line to wrap. Perhaps both?


HTH

Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

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Variable length rule below paragraph

[Alan Litchfield]

Hi all,

Is there a way to create a rule below a paragraph that has a variable  
length? That is, its length is adjusted according to the amount of  
text on the line, in the paragraph above.


Thanks
Alan
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Intrenal Error

[rebecca officer]

Hi Ranvijay

I don't know if anyone's replied to you off list, but I can't see any replies 
to the list so I thought I would reply. 

You need to give us different information. The image you attached got dropped 
by the list - the list won't accept any attachments. Also, FM gives internal 
errors for many things and they aren't much help to anyone but Adobe engineers. 
Adobe engineers don't read this list. Try searching Adobe's knowledgebase for 
your error number at:
http://www.adobe.com/support/main.html 

If that doesn't help, try emailing the list again, describing what you're doing 
when it crashes, and anything that's unusual about that particular file ... 
other than the crash :-(

Cheers, Rebecca

>>> "Ranvijay Chandel"  25/04/06 17:39:46 >>>
Hi All,

This is a critical error that I am getting when I save one particular
framemaker file in my book.

It does not give this error for other framemaker files.

Please see the attached image for details about the error.

Please provide a solution or workaround to this problem.

Thanks and regards,

Ranvijay Chandel

Information Developer

Yantra Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Bangalore (India)

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Technical Writing Suite From Adobe

[hedley.fin...@myob.com]

Bill:

> sell into the Academic publishing market

And into the commercial publishing non-fiction market!  Then publishers 
can stop using dumb Cindex and Sky Index to produce indexes that don't 
embed in the source text and have to be done all over again when they (a) 
publish the illustrated edition, (b) publish the paperback edition, (c) 
produce a revised edition with new matter, (d) license the publishing or 
translation rights, or (e) do anything that changes the page breaks and 
screws the index locator numbers.  Using IXgen to edit or translate the 
index while preserving all index entries no matter how pages break has got 
to be a plus.

Trouble is, the outsourcing and cottage-industry nature of publishing 
means all those freelance copy-editors, typographers (book designers), and 
indexers would all have to purchase FrameMaker, whereas EVERYBODY has 
Quark Express, InDesign, and Word.

Sob!

Hedley
--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications Tools & Processes Specialist
MYOB Australia 
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia

Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

? MYOB Technology Pty Ltd 2006

Missing Zapf Dingbats - can't reformat?

[Rick Quatro]

Hi Rosemary,

Go to File > Preferences > General and uncheck Remember Missing Font Names. 
Now when FrameMaker makes the font substitution in the document, it will be 
permanent.

Rick Quatro
Carmen Publishing
585-659-8267
www.frameexpert.com


Hello,

Does anyone know how to override missing fonts?

Here is my issue: When opening a file, FM gives me the missing font/will be 
reformatted message. I click OK. The document is automatically reformatted.

I save and close. When I open the doc again, I get the missing font message. 
The formats were not saved afterall.

If anyone knows why this is, and how I can work around it, I'd appreciate 
your help.

Also, has anyone out there had to buy Adobe Type in order to use fonts FM 
defaults to?

Thanks!

Rosemary Tinsley, Technical Writer
Myrio - Siemens
425-368-4525

Freeframers wiki page

[Sharon Smithe]

While looking for Framemaker resources, I found this site:

http://www.freeframers.org/wiki/

It hasn't been updated recently, but it seems like it could be a
useful resource for the Frame community.  Is there a reason nobody is
using it, or is it just be lack of interest?

Sharon
slsmithe - gmail - com

A couple (digest) items

[Beck, Charles]

Hi all,

Once again, I'm responding today to yesterday's posts, because I get
them by digest. I'd like to comment on a couple items:

--
Subject: FrameMaker Keyboard Shortcuts

I have a list of the shortcuts that I have found to be the most useful
(some of which I have not seen in the official FrameMaker documentation,
though they might be there somewhere). I am more than happy to share my
list with anyone who wants it. It is by no means an exhaustive list,
though, so user beware. If interested, let me know offline and I'll send
it to you. 

I would also be interested in seeing a complete list, so if anyone has
one, it might be nice to share it with the whole list--but in any case,
if you have one, please let me know.

Thanks.

--
Subject: A Technical Writing Suite From Adobe?

At the risk of being accused of jumping on the bandwagon, I have to
confess that I too am less than underwhelmed by the prospect of a
technical writing suite from Adobe. While I am a fairly devoted and
loyal FrameMaker user, I have always been very unimpressed with
RoboHelp. I never could understand why it won in the marketplace over
products like ForeHelp (anyone remember *that* one? --Great product and
the best tech support I've ever encountered!). I have little use for
Acrobat 3D or Captivate, and most of the technical communicators I know
are the same, so I really have to question how realistically Scott
Abel's crystal ball sees.

FWIW, I agree with Daniel Emory's suggestions. They make excellent sense
to me. Is anyone at Adobe listening?

--

That's it for now.
Chuck Beck
Charles.Beck at infor.com

Text appearing in fm file, but not in pdf

[Nathan Cullen]

Hi everyone,

I'm using structured Framemaker 7.1, and I have a problem I know I 
solved a couple of years ago, but here it is again. New job, new 
template, same problem. I have some tables in my documents that 
incorporate shading. In my .fm file the the tables appear perfectly 
fine; however, when the file is converted to a .pdf, the text doesnt 
appear in some of the cells in which there is shading. I know this is 
just some formatting glitch, because I solved it before, but for the 
life of me I cant figure out how.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards

Nathan Cullen

Text appearing in fm file, but not in pdf

[Jim Light]

Nathan,
I had this problem a short time ago.

The problem of vanishing table heading content is a bug in FrameMaker.
The workaround is to print to a PostScript file and then distill that.
It works like a charm.

The bug manifests itself when you have the combination of shaded cells,
PDF tagging is turned on in PDF setup, and you try to Save as PDF. I
need the shading and tagging, so I used the workaround. I assume that
turning off tagging or unshading would also work.

Jim


-Original Message-
From: framers-bounces+jlight=pillardata@lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+jlight=pillardata.com at lists.frameusers.com] On
Behalf Of Nathan Cullen
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 5:16 AM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Text appearing in fm file, but not in pdf

Hi everyone,

I'm using structured Framemaker 7.1, and I have a problem I know I 
solved a couple of years ago, but here it is again. New job, new 
template, same problem. I have some tables in my documents that 
incorporate shading. In my .fm file the the tables appear perfectly 
fine; however, when the file is converted to a .pdf, the text doesnt 
appear in some of the cells in which there is shading. I know this is 
just some formatting glitch, because I solved it before, but for the 
life of me I cant figure out how.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards

Nathan Cullen
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Creating Popup menus in FrameMaker

[Daniel Emory]

--- "Carol J. Elkins" 
wrote:
> Good post, Dan. However, I'm trying to visualize
your
> statement, "...clicking on this button produced a 
> menu of links to major subject areas..." The 
> button part I understand, the menu of links I'm
> struggling with. A popup menu? If so, could you tell
> me how you achieve the menu of links functionality?

You asked how a popup menu is created in FrameMaker.
Here?s the procedure: (steps 1 and 2 are used only if
a button in a background text frame on a master page
is used to open the menu. If, instead, you want to
open the menu from highlighted anchor text within a
body page, proceed directly to step 3).

1. On a reference page, draw a text frame. Inside that
text frame draw a button, and use the drawing tool?s
text button to insert, inside the button, a
descriptive name for the button.

2. Inside the empty paragraph at the top of the text
frame (not inside the button) insert a hypertext
marker of the form:
popup flowname
where flowname is the name of a text flow of a text
frame you are going to draw on a reference page.

3. Alternatively, you can skip steps 1 and 2, and
instead insert the "popup flowname" hypertext marker
into highlighted text (i.e., the hypertext anchor)
within an ordinary body page. NOTE: If you are using
structured FrameMaker, it might be advisable to
specify the "popup flowname" marker in your structure
rules, and define it as an element of type marker.

4. On a reference page (I usually create a special
reference page named "Popups"), draw a text frame and
assign that text frame the same flowname you specified
in step 2 or 3.

5. In the first paragraph inside the text frame
created in step 4, enter, on the top line, the title
of the popup menu (it?ll only appear in the popup menu
on Unix platforms). In the second and succeeding
paragraphs within the menu, type the names of the
items you want to appear on the menu.

6. Immediately following the last letter of each menu
item (other than the title) added in step 5, insert
the appropriate hypertext marker type (most commonly
jump to named destination, but other types may also be
used). The Jump to Named Destination marker has the
form:
 gotolink destination_name
 where destination_name is the
unique name of a newlink hypertext marker
 which you insert in the text
of the applicable content.
However, the hypertext link can also be to a popup
sub-menu, in which case the menu item that refers to
the submenu would be created in step 4 thru 6.
However, a sub-menu cannot reference another popup
menu.

7. If you used the button approach described in steps
1 and 2, copy the text frame containing the button you
created, and paste it as a background text frame on a
master page.

8. Once all that is accomplished, clicking on the
button (or the highlighted text) will open the popup
menu, and the user can then select the desired subject
node from the menu.

Creating Popup menus in FrameMaker

[Bill Briggs]

At 11:47 AM -0700 4/26/06, Daniel Emory wrote:
>--- "Carol J. Elkins" 
>wrote:
>> Good post, Dan. However, I'm trying to visualize
>your
>> statement, "...clicking on this button produced a
>> menu of links to major subject areas..." The
>> button part I understand, the menu of links I'm
>> struggling with. A popup menu? If so, could you tell
>> me how you achieve the menu of links functionality?
>
>You asked how a popup menu is created in FrameMaker.
>Here?s the procedure:

 Popups in FrameMaker are a treat. I made a little book for myself once (it had 
all sorts of stuff in it related to work, an address book, and a ton of other 
stuff) and I used it in printed form daily, but it had popups and hyperlink 
buttons for navigation in the software version. It was a great way to get 
around the book. I've used them in a few other places too, sometimes with an 
"invisible" button, so there was nothing in the printed version. Always loved 
that feature.

 - web

Creating Popup menus in FrameMaker

[Rick Quatro]

Hi Bill,

I agree wholeheartedly, but it's a shame that only FrameMaker users can 
benefit. As Dan said, it would be nice if all of FrameMaker's hypertext 
goodies would convert to PDF.

Rick

> Popups in FrameMaker are a treat. I made a little book for myself once (it 
> had all sorts of stuff in it related to work, an address book, and a ton 
> of other stuff) and I used it in printed form daily, but it had popups and 
> hyperlink buttons for navigation in the software version. It was a great 
> way to get around the book. I've used them in a few other places too, 
> sometimes with an "invisible" button, so there was nothing in the printed 
> version. Always loved that feature.
>
> - web

Creating Popup menus in FrameMaker

[Bill Briggs]

Yeah, it would be a really great thing to have all of FrameMaker's hypertext 
capabilities survive to PDF. But we'll see a plethora of tiny little 
Photoshop-style pallets before we'll see something useful like what Dan was 
talking about. Makes you wonder what drives the decision mechanism (if there is 
one) regarding software improvements. Once FrameMaker is reduced to a single 
platform, down from the glory days when it was on many. Two great quotes from 
the Wikipedia entry for FrameMaker.

"At the height of its success, FrameMaker ran on more than thirteen UNIX 
platforms, including NeXT Computer's NeXTSTEP and IBM's AIX operating systems."

"Frame Technology later ported FrameMaker to Microsoft Windows, but the company 
lost direction soon after its release."

- web


At 4:31 PM -0400 4/26/06, Rick Quatro wrote:
>Hi Bill,
>
>I agree wholeheartedly, but it's a shame that only FrameMaker users can 
>benefit. As Dan said, it would be nice if all of FrameMaker's hypertext 
>goodies would convert to PDF.
>
>Rick
>
>>Popups in FrameMaker are a treat. I made a little book for myself once (it 
>>had all sorts of stuff in it related to work, an address book, and a ton of 
>>other stuff) and I used it in printed form daily, but it had popups and 
>>hyperlink buttons for navigation in the software version. It was a great way 
>>to get around the book. I've used them in a few other places too, sometimes 
>>with an "invisible" button, so there was nothing in the printed version. 
>>Always loved that feature.
>>
>>- web

Creating Popup menus in FrameMaker

[Peter Gold]

Hi, Bill, Dan, and all:

At 8:46 PM -0300 4/26/06, Bill Briggs wrote:
>Yeah, it would be a really great thing to have all of FrameMaker's 
>hypertext capabilities survive to PDF. But we'll see a plethora of 
>tiny little Photoshop-style pallets before we'll see something 
>useful like what Dan was talking about. Makes you wonder what drives 
>the decision mechanism (if there is one) regarding software 
>improvements. Once FrameMaker is reduced to a single platform, down 
>from the glory days when it was on many. Two great quotes from the 
>Wikipedia entry for FrameMaker.
>
>"At the height of its success, FrameMaker ran on more than thirteen 
>UNIX platforms, including NeXT Computer's NeXTSTEP and IBM's AIX 
>operating systems."
>
>"Frame Technology later ported FrameMaker to Microsoft Windows, but 
>the company lost direction soon after its release."

I'm not sure if you'd find it by digging in Wikipedia, but to put 
your point in context, it helps to know that in the early days of 
unix and FrameMaker, as with the early days of CP/M, each hardware 
manufacturer had a proprietary version of the OS, which required 
software to be written, converted, adapted, or "ported" to run on it. 
To sell these adamantly-independent hardware platforms, their 
manufacturers like Pyramid, Sequent, CGI, NeXT, and others PAID BIG 
BUCKS to companies like Frame Technology, Sybase, and others whose 
software they wanted to offer to attract customers. NeXT even bundled 
FrameMaker 3.x with its machines.

In its early years, Sun required its resellers to sell a certain 
amount of software and support with each workstation, to avoid having 
resellers compete solely on bottom-dollar hardware prices and leave 
customers with no software and no support. FrameMaker on Solaris was 
a common component in those packages; both companies benefited.

Actually, FrameMaker was ported to Macintosh before Windows, because 
Windows at the time was too wimpy to support it.

While it's easy to point to what FrameMaker still hasn't incorporated 
from the long-standing user wish list, it's pretty remarkable to look 
back all the way to the FrameMaker 2.x era and see how much of the 
product's current productive feature set was built into it so early 
on.

It's quite correct to say that the code base evolved to a point 
that's nearly impossible to maintain, as features have been added and 
refined. This is what's holding back the ability to evolve on any of 
the remaining supported platforms, or those that have been dropped.

While many of us are quite inconvenienced by not having Mac OS X 
FrameMaker, how many users do we hear from who miss FrameMaker on 
Pyramid, Sequent, or NeXT? What's interesting about unix, is that 
it's easy to run FrameMaker on one Solaris machine and serve it to 
whole enterprises of users who connect to it from other unix 
platforms. It's not emulation, dual-boot, or virtual-machine - it's 
just unix.

As far as lack of support for converting the FrameMaker's advanced 
hypertext features - pop-up menus, button matrixes, etc. to other 
distribution formats - mif2go and WebWorks Publisher Professional 
accomplish these behaviors in HTML with somewhat less complex 
preparation in FrameMaker than FrameMaker's own steps require. I 
believe that some of these can also be accomplished in PDF with some 
of Shlomo Perets' tools.

It's half full, IMO. But, like most FrameMaker users, I expect at 
least three-quarters full. Hoping for more...


Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices