OT: Alternative to WWP
On Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:34:27 -0400, Murray Moore wrote: >FM 6.0, WWP 2003 for FrameMaker > >Using WWP and the WebWorks Help template I convert FM books to >individual Help files, e.g. FM Book A, B, C, and D becomes FM Book Help >A, B, C, and D. > >Customers of the company for which I work, from the company web site, >can download these Help files. But a client can use only one Help file >at a time. Why is that? Can't the clients just open another browser window, or tab, for each one they want to view? I often have a dozen tabs open at once... I'd be very surprised if WWHelp couldn't be used that way. OmniHelp certainly can be. >On occasion, using WWP, I create multi-volume help for a client, e.g. a >Help file which is a combination of FM Book Help A, B, C, and D. > >My manager is keen for our customers to have the ability to download two >or more of FM Book Help A, B, C, and D and without my assistance create >a multi-volume Help file. They'd have to merge the TOCs, IX, Search info, ALinks... I do not know of any user tool for doing that. It calls for the same tool that made the help files in the first place. Of course, you could create a "master" Help file that merges *all* of the others; then clients could just open the master, and they'd see whatever parts it calls that they have. >You are a client. You have downloaded FM Book Help A, B, and D, i.e. >three individual help files. How do you merge them? I don't. I view each in a browser tab, and flip back and forth as I please. If I need them side by side, I open a new browser window. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Mif2Go Question -- No .hhp file produced
On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 16:39:37 -0500, "Lin Surasky" wrote: >I'm posting for a remote colleage who is trying to generate HTML Help >from FrameMaker 7.2 (unstructured). He says there is no .hhp file >created when he runs Mif2Go, but doesn't get any errors. Since I can't >see what he's doing, where should I tell him to look (other than the >User Guide!) to see what's wrong? I've never had this problem, and have >no idea if it's even possible assuming he is choosing MS HTML Help as >the format (which he is). > >Any ideas? If he set WriteHelpProjectFile explicitly to No: [MSHtmlHelpOptions] WriteHelpProjectFile=No then no .hhp woud be written. If he did not set it, and thus left it at the default (of Yes), an .hhp would be written *unless* one already existed. If he set it explicitly to Yes: [MSHtmlHelpOptions] WriteHelpProjectFile=Yes then a new .hhp would always be written, overwriting the previous one. It's possible he's set an HHPFileName that can't be written because it's on a nonexistent drive, or points to a directory where he lacks write permission, or is an invalid file name. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
finding Mif2Go macros to replace WWP functionality
On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:40:44 -0400, Jim Owens wrote: >We're currently using WWP 2003 to generate CHM from our Frame docs, but >since there's no support past FM 7.2, we're evaluating our options. This >week I've been looking at Mif2Go. Good! You're not the only WWP user doing that... ;-) >We want to make the most of our existing Frame markup for Related Topic >buttons and drop-down hotspots. Out of the box, Mif2Go doesn't support >the WWP system for drop-down hotspots, We do have one of our own with the usual large set of options. See User's Guide par. 6.9, "Including expandable sections in Help topics". We're not familiar with the WWP method, but if you tell us what the markup for it is in Frame, we'll see what we can do to support that out of the box. >and it doesn't support buttons based on a Related Topics list. >(ALinks and KLinks are supported.) I don't quite understand that; "Related Topics" *are* ALinks. See par. 8.6.3, "Configuring ALink and KLink jumps for HTML Help". You might also want to look at our browser-based OmniHelp; we have a different way of using ALinks in it that provides a more consistent navigation UI. We added a tab in the left navigation pane for Related, and show all the topics that share an ALink with the current topic in it. No button or popup list needed. >But Mif2Go has a macro language that seems to be up to the task. The >necessary macros would be virtually the same for anyone contemplating a >migration from WWP. This leads me to ask whether anyone has already >developed "boilerplate" macros that they are willing to share. We'd like to know that too; if they exist, we'd be happy to include them in the User's Guide, and in a macro library file that would be part of the distro. We don't actually have WWP ourselves, so we'll need the help of those migrating to Mif2Go from WWP to do that. Thank you for raising this issue! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Batch Mif to FM Conversion Tool
On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:00:27 -0700, "Aden Jamison" wrote: >I'm curious if anyone has come across a tool/script that is capable of >batch conversions of Mif files to FM files? FrameMaker is the only tool that can legally read/write binary .fm files, thanks to Adobe's license restrictions. One simple way to accomplish something close to this is to rename the .mif files to .fm. Frame doesn't care; when you open one, it opens normally, and when you save it, it saves as .fm binary over the .mif. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
ANN: Job seeking
On Tue, 2 Dec 2008 13:30:08 +, "Bodvar Bjorgvinsson" wrote: >As so many other people in Iceland, and around the world for that >matter, my company is struggling and has made many layoffs recently. >Friday last I was one of the unlucky (or maybe lucky?) to be laid off, >but in my case, I have 6 months notice rights (which is good if the >company survives that long, which is not all that certain). So I will >be up for any odd jobs that can be worked on overseas. I have a couple >of times done overseas jobs from home, so that should not be a >problem. Yes, the tech sector here has been hard hit too, with major layoffs at Sun and at numerous other tech companies. It doesn't look as bad as the "dot-bomb" of 2000 yet, but we're nowhere near the bottom... >I will, of course, be applying for a job locally, but there are almost >no companies in Iceland that are using FrameMaker, so my FM knowledge >might not be such an advance here. OTOH, you have something to offer the poor folks who don't use Frame that they don't even know they need. ;-) It's a chance to show them The Way. We'd like to remind you, and anyone else here in a similar position, that Mif2Go is free for life to unemployed tech writers and underemployed consultants (you know who you are), as well as all academics (students, faculty, and staff). We've had this policy for many years, and a few thousand people have taken us up on it. We do not ask for any proof of status; we trust our customers, whether free or paid. Just send an email to offer at omsys.com, with subject "Mif2Go" (no quotes), with your name and email address, and we'll send you a password. The only email you'll ever get from us as a result is announcements of upgrades, all of which are free to you. And we'd like to thank our many paying customers, both individual and corporate, for making this possible! >I hope you will forgive me if you find me misusing the list, sending >this message, but I think it is at least useful for us all to see how >the job market is from time to time. I think it's entirely appropriate, considering the current world economic situation. >(Please don't send any condolences -- this is not the end of the >world -- yet!) The end of one world may be the beginning of a better one. The caterpillar passes on, to become a butterfly. We shall see... ;-) -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Source Control for Frame
On Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:53:38 -0600, Donald M Rinderknecht wrote: >Folks have mentioned going to MIF files or XML. Wouldn't those options >add steps to the workflow? I assume they (MIF or XML) would affect the >workflow in a similar fashion. Also, going to XML would require >structure (I assume) so I don't think we're ready for that. We've >started to use structure in some docs, but I haven't had time to >implement that broadly. We did try using MIF with CVS at one point. In fact, that's why we added MIF as an output format in Mif2Go, since the process of getting MIF that is usable for this purpose is a bit convoluted. (If you just SaveAs MIF to a different directory, Frame kindly updates your paths, making the result unusable in the original context.) This is a Mif2Go freebie, BTW, that works fine in the demo version. However, after a little while, we stopped. Why? Because some of the CVS files, for the *IX.fm files in particular, were ballooning up to huge sizes. It turns out that each time you generate an index, you get different ObjectIDs for everything, and every one of them was a "difference". Even with the rest, the MIF file compare provided by CVS was nearly useless, as you had to look at the MIF *code* to see what happened. We're MIF experts, but that was a bit too much to deal with for the purpose intended. Currently, we just make a .zip for all the files in each release, and archive that .zip. If we need to compare, we get out the old and new .fm files, rename one, and do the compare in Frame. But we hardly ever need to do that. For docs, source-control comparisons may be a solution looking for a problem. It sounds good, but really... ;-) That said, if you are just looking for text content comparison, you could SaveAs plain text, and archive *that* in CVS or SVN. Then you'll get it working the way programmers do, which could actually be helpful. -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
ANN: Job seeking
On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:20:51 -0500, "Jon Harvey" wrote: >You've obviously hit upon a business model that works well while making >a lot of un/underemployed people very happy. Yes, it does work well. And that's why we talk about it. We'd like to see other vendors, in this field and others, do the same. We'd be absolutely *delighted* to lose part of our "competitive advantage" that way.We'd rather compete on our software quality alone... with *everyone* working to even up our badly tilted economic playing field as best they can. >Every thought about taking over for what's-his-name at GM?.:) LOL! No thanks! He dug his own grave, but we shouldn't put all the employees who had no part in that in there with him. IMHO. All the best! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Re-installing FM 8 onto a new drive ...
On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:22:26 -0700, wrote: >Curiosity question: I see a number of people keeping FM7.2 on their >systems. Why? Wouldn't it be simpler to go to FM8 and be done with it? I >don't have a need to send .fm or .book files to people, but if I did, I >could save it in FM7.2 format if needed (as far as I recall) from within >FM 8. Not always true. While FM8 does offer FM7 (and FM7 MIF) as SaveAs choices, there are a few spots where the FM8 UTF-8 encoding still appears in the FM7 file. Numbering strings, for example, when you use a \b bullet in the string. As a result, in Mif2Go, we check FM7 files as well as FM8 files for UTF-8, and handle it correctly wherever it appears. But FM7 itself doesn't like UTF-8 at all... ;-) So we'd be wary of using FM8 in a mixed environment for files that will be worked on later by folks who have only FM7. If you do use it, test *very* thoroughly, and look in odd corners like variable definitions, xref formats, and those numbering strings. You may be fine, but it's best to find out early if you're not. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
FM 8 Apostrophe Problem
On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:43:45 -0500, Joel wrote: >I am using Frame 8 on Windows XP. In the past week I've noticed that >I'm unable to type apostrophes or quotation marks. All I get when I >type that character is a question mark where the apostrophe should be. >I've tried different fonts to no avail. Any idea what could be causing >this? Yes. With Frame not running, open your maker.ini, the one in the main FrameMaker directory, in a text editor. Find the [Spelling] section, and at the end of it is SmartQuotes: SmartQuotes= which shows the actual quote characters. Change it to: SmartQuotes=\xd4\xd5\xd2\xd3 which uses their numeric codes; this is actually specified in the file, in a comment above that line that has the codes for several different languages. Save and close maker.ini, open FrameMaker, and enjoy. I had the same problem, and that solved it for me. -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
FM 8 Apostrophe Problem
On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:22:34 -0500, Joel wrote: >That didn't work either. My .ini file already was configured in the >way that you wanted me to configure it. Is there possibly another .ini >file that Frame is reading from? The second maker.ini is at: C:\Documents and Settings\yourloginname\Application Data\Adobe\FrameMaker\8.0 But on my system, while it has a [Spelling] section, that section does *not* contain any SmartQuotes setting. >Is there a setting in the menus that I can tweak? Thanks, The other option is to turn smart quotes off, and use keyboard sequences to enter the quotes you want. But it's a PITA... Here's what I posted about that back in October, before finding that maker.ini setting: >What you need to do is, first, turn off Smart Quotes; >in Format > Document > Text Options... uncheck the box >at the top left and Apply. In FM8, it's dead; bury it. > >Now, if you type a ", you get a ", the straight one. >If you want the curly one, type Ctrl-q Shift-R for >the left one, or Ctrl-q Shift-S for the right. There >are other ways, but that's the fastest and simplest >method. The pre-8 method of Ctrl-Alt-` and Ctrl-Alt-' >does *not* work; it gives you single quotes in FM8. > >For single quotes, it's simpler. Type a `, and get a >left curly single quote; type a ', and get a right. >Ctrl-q Shift-T and Ctrl-q Shift-U also work, if you >are using a non-English keyboard. If you want the >actual straight character versions, you have to use >Ctrl-` and Ctrl-'. That's the same as in FM7. For the record, I'm still using 8.0p273, because of the reported issues with p277 when it came out (posted on Framers). That may make a difference. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Graphics Fundamentals
On Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:15:24 -0500, Jack DeLand wrote: >They may be .eps, but they are copied and pasted into the files, not >linked, so I can't open them, or at least don't know how to. There is no >graphics subdirectory or other file location. Ideas? You can always get embedded graphics out of Frame and into files of their *original* type with Mif2Go; the free demo version will do that for you: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm Detailed instructions are in the User's Guide, par. 29.2.3, "Exporting and converting embedded graphics". The graphics will not have their original names, because Frame discarded those on import. (Word does better; it keeps them. ;-) But they *will* be in the original format, most likely EPS in your case, and the process is very fast and automatic; you can do a full book at once. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Text insets question
On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:39:38 -0600, "Jerilynne Knight" wrote: >First, Happy new year to you!!! Hope you've got the day off to >celebrate... > >I am trying to find a way to eliminate the extra space that follows a text >inset and could swear I've seen something (although I can't seem to find >it...arghghgh). > >I have a specific tag I use for anchoring text insets. That tag is set to 2 >pt with 2 pts line spacing and I anchor the text inset to that tag when I >import it into the container document. > >I've tried: > > - Including the same anchor tag at the beginning of the text inset (per a > message I saw somewhere) > - Setting the line spacing to fixed and not fixed > - Putting an em space at the beginning of the line where the text inset > is anchored (I've done this to avoid the issue with repeating an > autonumbered tag before...works for that purpose!) > - Reformat using current document formats > - Retain source's formatting > > >I'm using Frame 7.0p492 under Windows XP Home with all updates. > >Any suggestions? Try putting a space at the *end* of the line where the inset is anchored, before you import the inset. IIRC, that's the trick. All the best! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
XHTML or CALS tables?
On Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:24:11 +0100, Peter Ring wrote: >Should I use the XHTML or CALS table model for structured documents >and XML storage format? I'd lean toward CALS. It's the one supported in DITA, which is the most buzzword-compliant XML format out there at present. ;-) CALS is also the preferred choice in DocBook, the most mature of the common XML formats, although DocBook has added support for the HTML table model too. In Mif2Go's DocBook output from Frame, you can select either one; we have customers using both. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
oldie (was: keep with next para)
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 03:51:08 -0800, "Diane Gaskill" wrote: >I wonder how many of us there are still on the list from those >"olden" days. I've been on it since it was hosted on uunet; I forget what year. After that I recall three volunteer admins at different universities before Brad came along... ;-) Who else? -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
maker.ini OpenDirOnStart: How can I prevent it from being updated?
On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 07:54:19 +, "Berman, Marta" wrote: >Is there any way to turn off this automatic update when exiting FrameMaker, so >that I can set a default directory? Or is there another way to accomplish what >I want from within FrameMaker? > >I can think of two workarounds: > >* Create a batch file that overrides the personalized maker.ini file with a >saved copy of the default one and then opens FrameMaker. Use this batch file >to start FrameMaker. > >* Make the personalized maker.ini file "read only." Then it cannot be updated >when exiting FrameMaker. > >In both of these workarounds, other settings such as RecentFiles, spell check >options, and zoom settings also cannot be updated. Here's another one. The Mif2Go demo version includes a utility, setini.exe, that can be used to set individual .ini-file items. In the User's Guide, it's described in par. 32.4.2.3, "Changing configuration settings with system commands": You can use a system command to make an arbitrary change to the configuration file, by having the command invoke command-line utility setini.exe, which is included in the Mif2Go distribution. Command setini changes the value of a single setting: setini inifile.ini section keyword value For example: setini mif2htm.ini HTMLOptions NoFonts Yes would exclude the use of tags in HTML output. This works with any .ini file, so you could use: setini "C:\path\to\maker.ini" Directories OpenDirOnStart "X:\path\you\want" in your bat file before opening Frame. Note that the quotes are only needed if the paths contain any spaces. The Mif2Go demo version is available at: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
List of Effective Pages (LEP)
On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:43:14 -0500, "Harold Winberg" wrote: >I have been tasked to help make a List of Effective Pages (LEP) that >conforms to military standard MIL-STD-40051-2. > >The manual is about 6500 pages. > >I know how the LEP should look but wonder if anyone out there has any >great ideas about doing it. > >We have a manually drafted list which we can finish manually. > >This could be very tedious. > >Is there a method or plug in to help do this? > >Could we generate it?? > >Any ideas will be greatly appreciated. You need: LEP Tools LEP Tools is a special-purpose FrameMaker plug-in that helps generate a List of Effective Pages for a set of FrameMaker documents. If you create document sets that require a List of Effective Pages, this plug-in may make that process much easier. LEP Tools is $30 for a single-user license, $300 for a site license, and is available for FrameMaker 6.x and 7.x on Windows and Macintosh. >From Silicon Prarie, <http://www.siliconprairiesoftware.com/>. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Cross References:using text that is not that linked to
On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:01:21 +0200, "Carrie Baker" wrote: >Can I create a cross reference to somewhere, when the text that >appears in the cross reference is something that I type in, and not >the text that appears in Heading 2 (i.e. will say xy statistics, even >though the header it jumps to is called Displaying xy statistics)? The simplest way to do that is to use hyperlinks instead of cross-references. First put a hypertext newlink marker in the destination paragraph, with a unique name for the para. Put a hypertext gotolink marker with the same name in the referencing paragraph at the text you want to use as the hotspot. Apply a character format to the hotspot text, including the gotolink marker. Then the hotspot text will act like a cross-reference in your PDF or HTML output. -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
FM8: Converting Asian FM7 files to Unicode
I wanted to study FM8 Unicode capabilities, so I tried to convert three Asian non-Unicode FM7 files to FM8 Unicode. It hasn't worked out very well. First I tried simply opening the files in FM8. After accepting the "conversion", I saved the Chinese file as FM8 MIF and looked at the text. It was still GB2312, like the FM7 file, not Unicode. Oops. I found that I could export to XML, then re-import the XML, and get Unicode UTF-8. But then all formatting was gone. Not a very good solution. Then I tried creating a new FM8 file, adding one line of text, and using File | Import | File by Copying the Chinese nominally-FM8 MIF. It worked! Nice Unicode MIF resulted, and Mif2Go made perfectly good Chinese HTML from it. So I repeated the import with the Japanese file. No go. Still ShiftJIS after the import and re-save as MIF. The same thing happened with the Korean file, no Unicode, still KSC5601. Oddly, the Chinese MIF file claimed to be using GB2312 in its para catalog, but it wasn't, as a hex dump established... There must be some simple step I'm missing here. After all, the FM8 online help says you can: Convert and import text of non-Unicode encodings such as FrameRoman, JISX0208.ShiftJIS, BIG5, GB2312-80.EUC, and KSC5601-1992, which were supported in earlier versions of FrameMaker. But that only worked for GB2312, not for the other two. Anyone have any ideas? Has anyone actually managed to convert an existing FM7 Asian doc to FM8 Unicode? -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
cudspan dobatch plugin problem (FrameMaker crashes)
On Fri, 4 Jan 2008 11:35:47 +0100, "Jakob Fix" wrote: >Also, in case we are unable to resolve this issue, I am considering >using Omnisys' runfm.exe batch tool. Would this be a valid >alternative? Yes. And it's also free; for print/PDF output, you just need to install the demo version: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm We use it ourselves for producing the User's Guide PDFs and other formats. If you set up a .bat file with the runfm command, and put a shortcut to it on your desktop, you get one-click production of your PDFs, possibly several of them at once. ;-) -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Converting Framemaker to Word
On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 17:07:59 -0800, "Fred Staal" wrote: >I am seeking assistance in the conversion of several Framemaker books, >varying from 150 to 500 pages in length (with many graphics, tables), to >reasonably cosmetic versions in Word. Please contact me directly if you >personally do contract work of this type. You can easily do this yourself with Mif2Go. Word RTF conversions are highly automated, and require very little fine tuning, if any. You can preserve xrefs and hyperlinks within and between files, and render autonumbers with stable SEQ fields rather than with Word's broken default numbering method. And it's *very* fast. Try the free unlimited demo version (which replaces random words with phrases from Jabberwocky) and see for yourself: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Converting Framemaker to Word
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:52:21 +0200, Shmuel Wolfson wrote: >I also recommend Mif2Go. Thank you! >However, Mif2Go will only insert cross-references as plain text. Not so! They become bookmarks and bookmark-references, emulating the Frame usage of <$paratext>, <$paranum>, and <$paranumonly> precisely (Word has no equivalent for these). We also wrap them as Word hyperlinks by default. You can turn off all this, or any part of it, but that's your choice. >If you need to continue working on the files in Word, you should >insert those manually. No, you can work with them fine, if you need to, but you shouldn't have to. If you change the source para text or number, the xref changes, just like it should, after you update all fields. >Also, you should get someone to help you with setting up Mif2Go. >It's not highly intuitive, IMHO. That varies. Some people tell us they have a deliverable result, a Word RTF file, 15 minutes after downloading the software. It depends on whether you used Frame features that Word cannot match. We emulate a *lot*, including autonumbers using SEQ fields, but there are limits, notably in header/footer usages. >Once it's set up, it works very fast and does a good job. Thanks again! ;-) -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Table Footnote question
On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:42:26 -0700, "Tammy Van Boening" wrote: > FM seems stuck on basing the numbers on columns! > >Any advice? Yes. Open the Table Designer for the table you're putting the footnotes into, and change the Numbering item on the right from Column First to Row First. Your footnotes will be renumbered accordingly. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
including automatic numbering in cross references and TOC entries
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:39:32 +0200, "Leah Smaller" wrote: >The procedure titles in our doucmentation all being with >"To" (example: To build a new device"), "To" being a >pgf autonumber. When I try to use the titles in an xref >or an index entry, they appear without the "To". How can >I tell FM to include the autonumber "To"? Your xref format includes the token <$paratext>. Add the token <$paranum> just before it. For the index entry, I presume you mean the text automatically put into the marker dialog doesn't have the "To". There, you'd have to type it in. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
pulling an image from an FM file
On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:13:06 -0400, Ken Poshedly wrote: >I could have sworn I saw this mentioned here at at least one time in >the past, but don't remember how long ago, but how to extract -- if >possible-- an embedded image from an FM file. (This is what I was >given to work with.) > >It's either do that, edit it and then re-import it or ele scan in a >hardcopy and save it as tif and go from there. Yes. We posted this info here May 2, in response to a similar query. Mif2Go can do that for you, and it works fine with the demo version; you don't have to buy it: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm The process is described in the User's Guide, par. 29.2.3, "Exporting and converting embedded graphics". It works best if the image is alone in its anchored frame; then you get the original format at full original resolution back. You do *not* get the original name, because Frame does not store it; yet another reason never to embed graphics. Worst case, Mif2Go exports the graphic at screen resolution, in the format you select (usually GIF or JPEG), using Frame's native graphic export filters. In that case, callouts, montages, etc., are retained, but the resolution is generally much worse than the original was. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
best graphic type to use for WINhelp4
On Fri, 6 Jun 2008 14:45:40 -0500, "Bruce Megan (Telex)" wrote: >Does anyone know the best file type and resolution to use for graphics >(screen shots) in RoboHelp (WinHelp4). I am running XP with Robohelp for >Word 6. The format WinHelp likes best is WMF, which can contain both vector and bitmap elements. However, if you are using WinHelp in 16-bit Windows systems (Win95, Win98, ME), there's a memory leak in the system code that displays WMFs that results in strange display behavior; in that case, it's better to use BMPs. For screenshots, use the same resolution at which they were taken, 96DPI; more or less will result in unreadable text. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
saving marker and topic title during Mif2GO processing
On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:29:55 -0400, Jim Owens wrote: >As part of our Help production, we need a list of context-sensitive >markers and topic titles, like this: > >IDH_NewWidget "Adding widgets" >IDH_EditWidget "Editing widgets" > >(The exact formatting doesn't matter; I'll be processing it anyway.) We >use this information to update our help testing tool, so that the tester >knows what topic title is associated with a given hook. > >We're using Mif2GO to generate HTML Help. I'd like to use Mif2GO to >create this list at the same time. (I'm also interested in reasonable >alternatives.) > > From early research, I think I can: > >- save the marker values as macro variables >- save the topic titles as macro variables >- use a FileEndCommand to pass these macro variables to a custom EXE >that can add them to a file. > >Is this possible? Is there a better way? It would be difficult. It really needs a feature we have planned but not yet implemented, as part of a macro enhancement project, which would allow dynamic redirection of macro output to different files. However, we looked at what would be needed to create the file you want, and it turned out to be simple, so we did it. We added: [MSHtmlHelpOptions] ; AliasTitle = No (default) or Yes (generate .hht file with titles for all ; topics containing CSH aliases, like the .hha but with titles not filenames) AliasTitle=No This is implemented in the beta h285i.zip, now available at our download sites. We credited you for the idea in hist52h.txt. Download the beta, unzip it, and copy the dwhtm.dll in it to your \windows\system32 dir over the existing copy. Thank you very much for this enhancement suggestion! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Pop-up on hypertext in a pdf document/hypertext?
On Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:30:48 -0600, "Fausset, Marilyn" wrote: >Is there any way to use FrameMaker (and perhaps an add-on) to create >pop-ups when saving Frame as HTML? Sure. I don't know if Frame's native HTML export supports them, but Mif2Go certainly does, in HTML-based Help systems. See the User's Guide, par. 6.8.3, "Displaying a topic in a pop-up window", for a brief summary. You can view the User's Guide in OmniHelp format at: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/ohusergd/ Par. 6.8.1, "Understanding pop-up hotspots, links, and topics", shows a popup link. Naturally, you have to allow the popups in your browser for them to work. If you want a popup in non-Help HTML, you need to use JavaScript. Mif2Go also supports inclusion of arbitrary JS wherever you want. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Possible MIF -> FM bug in FM 8.02 (p273)
On Fri, 7 Mar 2008 16:24:48 +0100, "Broberg, Mats" wrote: >Concise problem statement: >Opening edited (translated) MIF files in FrameMaker 8 causes some >of the extended characters disappear. Text containing extended >characters for different languages are missing characters in >FrameMaker, although all characters are present in the MIF file. >The missing characters follow no particular pattern, most of the >time all characters are there. We can confirm this bug in Frame 8.0p273. In your test case, the last UTF-8 character was dropped; the others were kept. We investigated a bit further and may have a workaround for you. We noticed the string content was fairly long, at 214 bytes (counting the five UTF-8 instances as two bytes each). While that doesn't exceed the 254-byte limit, we thought it would be worth examining. When we cut the string into three ParaLines as Frame would, where the first two were about 100 bytes each, all characters remained. We understand that a TM tool is generating the MIF. Is there a way to limit the maximum line length it allows in a single to, say, 128? The length doesn't really matter to Frame, since the line breaks are reset anyway upon loading the MIF. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Possible MIF -> FM bug in FM 8.02 (p273)
On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 11:45:45 -0500, "Alison Carrico" wrote: >This could end up being an issue for my company. Do you know if it >happens with v7 MIFs when opened with v8? Since the bug specifically affects UTF-8 sequences, and those are not used in Frame 7 MIF, it seems unlikely. -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
FM abruptly closes with no save
On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 02:02:59 -0800, "Diane Gaskill" wrote: >I run FM8.02 on a laptop running XPSP2 with 2GB of RAM. I have recently >experienced several crashes in situations that I never had crashes with when >using FM7.0. I'm running 8.02 also, but on Win2K Pro SP4... and see *no* crashes. That makes me wonder if the trouble is related to a new "feature" that does not exist on 2K but does on XP and Vista: activation. All other features seem to be supported on all WinOS flavors... One reason we've never considered using such "security" on Mif2Go is that it can have just such undesirable side effects. Just a thought about where to look, Adobe. -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Export a FM book to single Word file?
On Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:00:38 -0700, "Tina Ricks" wrote: >I'd like to export my Frame book (easily) to one giant Word file, and I >haven't figured out how to do it other than one file at a time, then put >them back together by hand in Word. That's possible, but not a good idea. Word has numerous problems with large files, and a typical Frame book would produce a *very* large Word file. Nonetheless, if you still feel the need to do it, you can make up a new Frame document and import by reference all of the files in your book as insets. You will lose any differences in master pages, and your numbering will be continuous, so any use of <$chapnum> will not work as expected. But you can then convert the file to a single Word file. >I have many outside reviewers who need to review and add comments >electronically, and like it or not, Word is the lingua franca of most of the >world. My reviewers are fine that the pages look a little weird in the Frame >RTF export. If it's only "a little weird", you've done remarkably well! ;-) If you want the Word files to look almost exactly like the Frame files, with features like sideheads and hyperlinks preserved, have a look at Mif2Go. There's a free, unlimited demo version at: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm We're the developers of Mif2Go, so we may be biased , but we don't know of any other tool that gives such a close rendering of Frame files in Word. In addition, Mif2Go produces top-quality HTML and XML (including DocBook and DITA), plus numerous Help formats, from unstructured as well as structured Frame, and can be fully automated. It's also fast and inexpensive. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Extracting copied-in graphics from documents
On Fri, 2 May 2008 10:02:25 +1000, "Geoffrey Marnell" wrote: >A posting some weeks ago mentioned a utility that could extract graphics >copied into FM files and restore them in their original format. I should >have been paying more attention at the time, but can someone remind me what >that utility is called? (I'm hoping it can do a better job than Acrobat.) Yes. Mif2Go can do that for you, and it works fine with the demo version; you don't have to buy it: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm The process is described in the User's Guide, par. 29.2.3, "Exporting and converting embedded graphics". It works best if the image is alone in its anchored frame; then you get the original format at full original resolution back. You do *not* get the original name, because Frame does not store it; yet another reason never to embed graphics. Worst case, Mif2Go exports the graphic at screen resolution, in the format you select (usually GIF or JPEG), using Frame's native graphic export filters. In that case, callouts, montages, etc., are retained, but the resolution is generally much worse than the original was. >BTW: does anyone know of a similar utility that can pull graphics out of MS >Word documents? Actually, you can do that with another utility included with Mif2Go, exwmf.exe. Save the Word file as RTF, and run the utility from the command line, as described in par. 29.6.2, "Using the Mif2Go exwmf utility". Word *does* retain the names of the graphics it embeds, so you will get back WMFs containing Word's internal representation of each image named "originalname.wmf". HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Extracting copied-in graphics from documents
On Fri, 02 May 2008 13:45:07 -0700, Dennis Brunnenmeyer wrote: >As far as I know, the previous suggestion of simply saving the Word >file as in HTML format is as simple and as *accurate* as you can get. >I can't imagine why one would need a third-party utility or a screen >shot application to do this, but then my imagination is limited to >personal experiences. Try it. LOL! For many purposes, the save-as-HTML method may be adequate. But it *is* more-or-less lossy, compared to the internal WMF Word retains, depending on the original format of the image. For vector images imported into Word, the loss is major, as the vector elements (such as equations, for example) are converted to bitmaps (GIF or JPEG) as part of the save-as-HTML process. Text becomes fuzzy, thin lines break up, sharp edges lose some definition. For images that were originally bitmaps, the loss comes from the resampling Word does when creating the output bitmaps at screen resolution. If the original was also at screen resolution, the resampling errors may have only minor consequences (text harder to read), but if it was at print resolution, the loss is worse (from 300dpi down to 96dpi), resulting in ugly printed images. All that can be avoided by extracting the internal WMF images (which can include both bitmap and vector components) from the Word RTF file directly. That's what exwmf.exe does. And since it is fully functional in the demo version of Mif2Go, at: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm it is *free*, with our blessings. What's not to like? ;-) -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
PDF Generation with runfm.exe of OmniSystems Inc.
On Mon, 5 May 2008 17:57:39 +0200, "Alexandre Mazouz" wrote: >I am new User of the command Line runfm.exe (Mif2Go of OmniSystems Inc.). ;-) >I have created a batch file containing a list of runfm to generate PDF. >but for some files i have problems without solution. >Look to the messages from the FrameMaker Console Window : > >1) >C:\Documents and Settings\amazouz>runfm -doc >"D:\consolidation\nr500\fm\PartB\Ch >apter11\PartBChap11Sect03.fm" -pdf doc >"G:\erules\data\_src\_new\nr500\pdf\n0001 >0002\00110003.pdf" -close doc >=> >runfm Ver. 3.3, Build 003 > >runfm project "pdf doc" started: Mon May 05 17:30:08 2008 > >Opened document: >D:\consolidation\nr500\fm\PartB\Chapter11\PartBChap11Sect03.fm >Current active document: >D:\consolidation\nr500\fm\PartB\Chapter11\PartBChap11Sect03.fm >Making PDF for: >D:\consolidation\nr500\fm\PartB\Chapter11\PartBChap11Sect03.fm >PDF file: G:\erules\data\_src\_new\nr500\pdf\n00010002\00110003.pdf >PDF failed: Unknown error. (-27) That happened when F_ApiSilentPrintDoc() returned FE_BadOperation, which is not documented in the FDK. Have you tried making the PDF for this doc by hand? If that doesn't work, runfm won't either. If it does, runfm *should* work. >Failure in Frame FDK client: OmniBookExport >runfm project failed: Mon May 05 17:30:08 2008 > >Closed document: >D:\consolidation\nr500\fm\PartB\Chapter11\PartBChap11Sect03.fm > >I don't understand??? The error you got is not one of the two documented for that FDK function, so you'll need to do the usual troubleshooting for PDF problems. Sometimes there's a graphic Distiller doesn't like. If you get an error when you make the PDF manually in Frame (by printing to the Adobe PDF printer, *not* by SaveAs PDF), try cutting the file in half, and see which part still has the problem. Repeat until you identify the exact point of trouble. >2) >runfm -doc "D:\consolidation\nr500\fm\PartB\Ch >apter12\PartBChap12Sect04.fm" -pdf doc >"G:\erules\data\_src\_new\nr500\pdf\n0001 >0002\00120004.pdf" -close doc >=> >runfm Ver. 3.3, Build 003 > >runfm project "pdf doc" started: Mon May 05 17:52:01 2008 > >Opened document: >D:\consolidation\nr500\fm\PartB\Chapter12\PartBChap12Sect04.fm >Current active document: >D:\consolidation\nr500\fm\PartB\Chapter12\PartBChap12Sect04.fm >Making PDF for: >D:\consolidation\nr500\fm\PartB\Chapter12\PartBChap12Sect04.fm >PDF file: G:\erules\data\_src\_new\nr500\pdf\n00010002\00120004.pdf >PDF not found: C:\Documents and Settings\amazouz\Mes >documents\PartBChap12Sect04.pdf When Distiller makes the PDF, it always writes it to "My Documents" for the logged-in user (in your case, "amazouz\Mes documents"). If it fails, we *may* not get an error back from the FDK, but the file simply isn't there. That's what happened here. When we *do* find the file, we move it to the destination you specified. We do *not* depend on the English name for the directory; we get the path from Windows for the current session by an API call. >runfm project completed: Mon May 05 17:53:13 2008 > >Closed document: >D:\consolidation\nr500\fm\PartB\Chapter12\PartBChap12Sect04.fm > >It appends only for 4 or 5 fm files.All others are well. That's good, it means your installation is correct. The trouble is in the failing files themselves (at least, Distiller thinks so). >I have carefully check my Distiller and Adobe PDF, it seems okay. > >Have you any idea? It's a good idea, when using runfm, to start by doing the same operation you want to automate from within FrameMaker, by hand. Watch for errors. If it doesn't work that way, runfm won't work either. You can also tell runfm to write even more diagnostics by adding: -diag to your command line, and you can save the messages to a file: -log logfile.txt New messages are appended to the file, so you can use the same file for many sessions. If you specify -log with no name, we use mif2go.log in the current directory. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Mif2Go - FM graphic sizing issue when outputting to HTML
On Wed, 7 May 2008 07:33:20 +1000, "bja" wrote, but the list diddn't post it for some hours. In between, we answered the same post, also sent to us, directly: >I have dozens of graphics EMBEDDED in my FrameMaker documents at various dpi >settings. All print well of course. > >I convert to Standard HTML using Mif2Go. > >By default Mif2Go retains the FramaMaker image sizes so many of the graphics >are unreadable in the finished HTML. > >To resolve this, I set the following statement in the mif2htm.ini file: > >[GraphScale] >*=0 > >In the past (using FM7.1), this setting reverted the graphics back to their >original DPI setting and undid any FM editing as well (such as rotation). > >Now, I am using FM8.0 and the above statement does not appear to work any >more. It won't for embedded graphics, only for referenced. The reason is that with embedded graphics, we have to have Frame use its native graphic export filters to produce images, and those always resample the graphics to the DPI specified at the size of the anchored frame. >This should have the same effect as the *=0 statement so I am wondering if >there is something I am not taking into consideration or if this might be >another FM8.0 issue. It's not 8.0, it's always the case for embedded graphics. Another reason that's a Real Bad Idea, as if more were needed... ;-) >As an aside, I cannot test this as I am no longer on site and only have >FM7.1 at home (I do have a copy of the mif2htm.ini file though). I am just >trying to be of assistance to a previous manager so any help would be >greatly appreciated. What you can do is labor-intensive, but you only have to do it once: change from embedded to referenced. If you still have the original graphics, you can re-import them by reference with the embedded one selected, and the referenced one will replace the embedded. If you *don't* have the originals, you can export the embedded ones from Frame with Mif2Go, rename them appropriately, then re-import as above. See par. 29.2.3.2, "Exporting embedded graphics before converting". HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
default "reply-to-all" (was Re: FrameMaker 8.0.3 Update Now Available (POSSIBLE WORKAROUND))
On Wed, 14 May 2008 22:05:47 -0400, Alan Houser wrote: >Which is worse? -- > >- You reply to a message on the list. Assuming that you are replying to >the sender, you include information that is personal, privileged, or >inappropriate-for-public-consumption. Your reply goes to the entire >list. The damage is done. > >- You reply to a message on the list. It goes to the sender. With two >mouse clicks, you correct the oversight and direct your reply to the list. > >A default "reply-to-all" listserv configuration is evil. Quite right. But it's worse than that. A list with reply-to-all is vulnerable at any time to a "mail loop", in which an error by one member results in an exponentially-increasing avalanche of copies of every message posted back to the list. Reply-to-sender prevents that. While there are other ways to detect and prevent such loops, not every listowner has implemented them, and one such incident can cause most of the listmembers to depart fast... never to return. As a listadmin myself, I consider that a Very Bad Idea. -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
What version of Frame to Get Started ?
On Thu, 15 May 2008 15:04:12 -0700, Dov Isaacs wrote: >Please be careful wrt/ EBay software "purchases" - a large percentage >of what is hawked on EBay is either pirated or stolen goods. Pirated >includes simply copying disks and giving you the serial number as well >as massive CD duplication efforts. In some cases what is being "sold" >is a copy of a package that already has been upgraded and not eligible >to be legally transferred to someone else. Before bidding on such an >item, get proof that it is indeed a legal copy that can be legally >transferred. Such information could be obtained from Adobe Customer >Support given a name and serial number. +1 If they won't give you the serial number, point out that the SN is *not* the product key; you couldn't use it against them, unless, of course, they *are* pirates. ;-) Another thing to watch for on eBay is "academic" versions, being sold either by a student or by an academic vendor who doesn't require a check of your credentials. Most of the folks selling those won't mention this little detail, so *always* ask, publically, on the auction item's page. Then, if they lie, you have some recourse. Otherwise you don't. The vendor *must* identify the item as "new" or "used". Avoid the used ones. Adobe may allow license transfer, but that's not a sure thing; the package may have been used for an upgrade, for example. If they claim "new", and you cannot register with Adobe because it wasn't, file a claim against them with eBay, PayPal, *and* your credit-card provider immediately on grounds of fraud. Lots of people have shrinkwrap machines. ;-) eBay gives new meaning to "caveat emptor"... -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
What version of Frame to Get Started ?
On Thu, 15 May 2008 17:49:12 -0700 (PDT), Susan Modlin wrote: >And if you attempt to block a credit card payment to >PayPal, be prepared for unremitting and increasingly >unpleasant letters and emails. Quite right. I did that, and was told I'd be banned if I ever did it again. They insist that you wait 30 days before *initiating* the complaint process. The rub? That exceeds the credit-card notification time limit, so you are completely at their mercy... and they have none. IMHO, that makes them complicit with the thieves. I don't use them any more. If the vendor can't/won't take a credit card *directly*, forget it. -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
roundtrip documentation and help (Framemaker/Robohelp - chicken or egg?
On Wed, 21 May 2008 08:31:47 -0700 (PDT), Rene Stephenson wrote: >I would: >d) Buy the current Adobe Technical Communicator Suite, just a $900 upgrade >with ANY previous license for FM or RH. > >because the new RH and FM8 work together seamlessly. As I understand it, >you don't have to roundtrip stuff back and forth through MIF anymore. You just >set up your RH template, point it to the FM source, make all your edits in FM, >and as the content evolves in FM, so does your Help output. Just regenerate >the RH project as needed. Or: e) Buy Mif2Go, a $295 plugin for any version of Frame since 5.5.6, including 8.x, and save $600...Save way more than that compared to ePP. ... because it really *does* what you want, with your single source in Frame, and you never have to roundtrip at all. All Help features are in your Frame file, either implicitly (based on formats used) or explicitly (markers), and you can generate the Help in seconds whenever you want to look at it. ;-) BTW, that *does* include drop-down text, something mentioned later in this thread... And none of the Help markup interferes in any way with Frame's normal functionality for print and PDF outputs. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Disappearing Paragraph Tags from status bar
On Thu, 22 May 2008 14:39:10 -0700, Doug wrote: >At one point, I did have the trial version installed. I don't see it >listed in the Add or Remove Programs window, though. I do, however, >have Mif2Go commands on the FrameMaker File menu. Did I not properly >uninstall it? No, not if the commands are still there. You have to remove m2rbook.dll and m2gframe.dll from your frame\fminit\plugins directory, and delete .cache there, while Frame is *not* running. However, we show the ID only when you *shift*-click in a para; when you do anything else at all, that's cleared and you get the normal status bar back. Maybe you only removed one DLL, m2gframe.dll, so that the plugin was left in a broken state? -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Mif2Go Prev and Next navigation macros
ven tried deleting the Chapter tag in one chapter. With >StartingSplit=Yes, I still get a "Test File from Mif2Go" Prev button on >the first page of the chapter, and the button opens an empty page >(except for the headers and footers). With StartingSplit=No, I get a >blank Prev button at the beginning of the chapter, and this button does >nothing; and the Next button for the last topic of the preceding chapter >still does nothing. You still have *some* content before the first h1, though. That's the problem. >I hope I haven't provided too much detail. I would like the Prev and >Next buttons to work end-to-end. That should happen as soon as the first h1 really starts the file (because the content before it is conditioned out). >Once they're working, I'd also like to >use graphics for the links instead of text (as in href="next_topic.htm">). You mean, instead of buttons, right? You can do that by editing the [NavigationMacros] themselves, replacing the <$$_*title> in each with your tag. Note that the user will no longer know where the link will take her, though; we advise against this. >P.S. I considered writing my own macros, but I came up against this >problem: when writing the last topic in Chapter 1, I haven't processed >Chapter 2 yet, so I can't define the link to Chapter 2's h1 topic. I >seem to need two passes, one to define all the topic file names, and >another to add links to any topic file names that occur later in the >document. Is there a way I can do this? It's not really necessary. We had a similar system before the rewrite of the <$_prev>/<$_next> code, and it was hard to maintain. That's one of the main reasons we made this enhancement. If you continue to have any problem with this, please send us a trimmed-down test case, like a book with two or three one-page files, so we can help you further. Include the .book, .fm, .mif, both .inis, .prj, and *all* output files (including the log), all in one .zip. We'll look into it promptly. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Mif2Go: removing CRLF from CodeStore content
On Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:55:48 -0500, Jim Owens wrote: >What I want to do is take some text that appears early in the paragraph, >and convert it to a link in an MS HTML Help "Related Topic" button. As >part of this, I have to provide text for the link. My problem is that >the text contains CRLF characters, and these show up as little squares >in the link. I can't get rid of them. There is no test I can find that >returns 1 when a character is 0a or 0d, or when a string contains \n. Hi Jim. We know you found a workaround, but it sounds like this would be a nice little enhancement to the Mif2Go macro expression operators. We're thinking of something like: <$$MyFixedVar = ($$MyOriginalVar strip "\r\n")> where any character listed in the right side would be removed from the var on the left side of "strip", and the result would be assigned to the var at the start of the macro var expression. We've already built this, but would like to test it with your case before posting a new beta. Could you kindly send us a one-page test case, including the .fm, .mif, .prj, both .inis, and all output files, all in one .zip? Thanks! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
MIF2Go issues
On Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:17:32 -0400, "John Sgammato" wrote: >I am struggling with some online help. I hope someone >out there can help me. We're always game. ;-) >We have used Mif2Go to excellent effect for our last >few product releases, but it was always handled by my >genius intern. Alas! He has graduated and this seems >far beyond my abilities, at least after 8 hours at it. LOL! Don't give up! Just take it one step at a time... >I have a relatively simple unstructured FM8 book (13 >files including front matter and index, one text inset, >no conditional text). > >When I generate the OmniHelp output, I see two strange >things: >* The output files never appear in the wrap folder even >though WrapAndShip=Yes and the wrap folder awaits Odd. Are you sure the [Automation]WrapPath is correct for your system? It looks like you are working on a server; are you sure you have write permission in the wrap folder? For that matter, are you sure the files are getting produced at all? Frame has problems working with files on a server... we don't, but if *it* won't, there's not much we can do. Try moving your project to a local drive, and see if that helps. But first, see if you can copy the .htm files from the working dir to the wrap dir using Explorer. All we do is copy *.htm, *.js, *.gif, *.jpg, *.png, and *.svg; worst case, just do that by hand. >* The ApplianceGuide_oh* files all end in .js Good! That's a change we made last year, for the benefit of some browsers that won't treat them as JS (which they are) if they don't have a .js ext. Make sure you have the matching OH viewer files for your project, not an older set. The new ones are in ohvhtm10.zip (for HTML) or ohvxml10.zip (XHTML), which you should have. >It's getting pretty late and I am going blind over this. >Does anyone have any ideas what I am doing wrong? I copied >mif2htm.ini at the bottom of this in case anyone feels >particularly sleuth-ish. I appreciate any help. Your mif2htm.ini file looks fine. If you still have any problems, do write us directly. ;-) HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Odd keyboard behavior
On Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:27:05 -0400, "Dosick, Daniel (GE EntSol, Security)"
wrote:
>FM8 (patch 277), WinXP pro
>
>This one's pretty bizarre:
>
>As of a couple of days ago (I think), when I type a single or double
>quotation mark (' or ") in Frame 8, a question mark appears rather than
>the quotation mark character.
>
>Changing the font has no effect. All the other keys do just what they're
>supposed to do.
>
>This is only happening in FM8, not in FM7.1 or in any other application
>I've tried.
>
>Any ideas?
It's a Frame 8 bug; the "Smart Quotes" feature is broken.
As you know, Frame began using Unicode internally in FM8.
Pre-Unicode versions, like FM7, used the character set in
Windows Code Page 1252, ANSI, instead, The two character
sets are basically identical for most code points, *except*
for characters from U+0080 through U+009F. In Unicode,
those code points are the "C1 control characters" and do
not display. In ANSI, they are a collection of symbols
that include the curly quotes among others.
In FM7, using "Smart Quotes" and typing " resulted in
either character 0x93 (left) or 0x94 (right), depending
on context. In Unicode, those code points are not
displayable, but Frame didn't convert them to the right
Unicode characters, U+201C and U+201D, as it did for
most other characters in that zone. Instead, it leaves
the old ANSI in place, and displays a question mark.
Interestingly, if you use Mif2Go to convert that file
to either HTML or Word RTF, the characters are correct
in the output. How come? For HTML, browsers still
support the ANSI values, which Mif2Go passes through,
even though they are not valid Unicode. For RTF, Word
still uses the ANSI set itself; in fact, Mif2Go has to
convert the other Unicode chars back to ANSI to make
Word happy. But that doesn't help if you make a PDF;
you still get the question marks.
What you need to do is, first, turn off Smart Quotes;
in Format > Document > Text Options... uncheck the box
at the top left and Apply. In FM8, it's dead; bury it.
Now, if you type a ", you get a ", the straight one.
If you want the curly one, type Ctrl-q Shift-R for
the left one, or Ctrl-q Shift-S for the right. There
are other ways, but that's the fastest and simplest
method. The pre-8 method of Ctrl-Alt-` and Ctrl-Alt-'
does *not* work; it gives you single quotes in FM8.
For single quotes, it's simpler. Type a `, and get a
left curly single quote; type a ', and get a right.
Ctrl-q Shift-T and Ctrl-q Shift-U also work, if you
are using a non-English keyboard. If you want the
actual straight character versions, you have to use
Ctrl-` and Ctrl-'. That's the same as in FM7.
Other characters in the 80-9F range are handled more
gracefully. If you use the Ctrl-q sequences, you get
the real Unicode character, mostly in the U+2000 area.
Ctrl-q is your new best friend. ;-)
HTH!
-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
http://www.omsys.com/
Odd keyboard behavior
On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 08:22:29 +0200, "Yves Barbion" wrote: >Are you sure the Smart Quotes feature is dead in FM8? It's still seems to >work fine in my version. I'm using FM 8.0p277 in Windows XP and I get nice >smart single and double quotes. It's never worked for me, and seeing what Frame puts in the MIF, it's hard to understand how it could work for anyone... If you want to send me a Frame file with an example of some you put in that way, I'll see if there's a difference viewing it here. -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Odd keyboard behavior
On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:37:02 -0700, "Jeremy H. Griffith" wrote: >If you >want to send me a Frame file with an example of some you put in >that way, I'll see if there's a difference viewing it here. Dr. Winifred Reng sent me one, and provided the clue that nailed the problem; thank you! It *is* a Frame 8 bug... but it's fixable in maker.ini. ;-) You will find a section there (in the main maker.ini, in the directory with framemaker.exe) that has these lines: ; Smart Quote Characters ; SmartQuotes \xd4\xd5\xd2\xd3 ) English curved quotes ; SmartQuotes \xe2\xd4\xe3\xd2 ) German-style quotes with base quotes ; SmartQuotes \xd5\xd5\xc7\xc8 ) French-style quotes using guillemets ; SmartQuotes \xd5\xd5\xd3\xd3 ) Swedish- and Finnish-style quotes ; SmartQuotes \xd4\xd5\xd2\xd3 ) Italian curved quotes ; ; English curved quotes: SmartQuotes= Note that the first set is commented out, and the last line is the one in effect. And that's the bug. The characters there are the old ANSI ones, so those are what FM8 uses, with the bad results described before. So, when *European* users are setting up, they change to the line needed for their country, German in Dr. Reng's case. And those *work*. (Dr. Reng also changed \xe2 to \x2c to correct for a font problem in Univers, a missing baseline single quote.) For those of us using English, then, the fix is: ; English curved quotes: ; SmartQuotes= Get rid of this mistake!! ; These are the right ones (note added equal sign): SmartQuotes=\xd4\xd5\xd2\xd3 That tells Frame to use its *internally-coded* characters, and those it knows how to map to the real Unicode characters, because in the MIF we get UTF-8 that is correct for those. Thank you, Winfried! Mit freundlichen Gr??en -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Odd keyboard behavior
On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 08:56:28 -0600, wrote: >> For those of us using English, then, the fix is: >> >> SmartQuotes=''"" Get rid of this mistake!! >> SmartQuotes=\xd4\xd5\xd2\xd3 >> >> That tells Frame to use its *internally-coded* characters, >> and those it knows how to map to the real Unicode characters, >> because in the MIF we get UTF-8 that is correct for those. > >Hmmm ... a question. I seem to get the same identical result (on the >screen anyway) with either of the two versions above. Did you make the change while Frame was *not* running? If you make it while Frame is running, Frame will wipe it out when it closes. >Is there some difference elsewhere that would matter? Could be. I've seen a couple of others post that the default works for them. I've checked several times, and it doesn't for me. Totally reproducible. >BTW: I am using the U.S. version 8.0p277, in English only, on a Windows >XP SP3 system.) I'm still using 8.0p273, because of the reported issues with p277 when it came out (posted on Framers). Maybe they fixed it then... -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Underlining index entries
On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:20:02 -0400, "John Sgammato" wrote: >Does anyone have an easy way to underline the page numbers only in an >index entry? Or to make them blue? They are live links in the PDF so I >want to show that, but I don't want to underline the whole entry. >Actually, I am not really sure I want this. Somebody else does. I have a >very faint memory of seeing such a thing and finding it unattractive and >downright distracting. But I should follow up anyway and let the boss >decide for himself. Sure. In your IX file, go to the reference page named IX, and find the line(s) containing <$pagenum>. Apply a character format to that whole line with the properties you want. Save, regenerate the IX from the book, and all your page numbers (but not the index entry text) will have the properties you set. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
MadCap Flare
On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:56:53 -0700, "Callie Bertsche" wrote: >My dream for our help bundle is generation from a >script in our nightly product build, which would >negate the need for any personal postprocessing. This is, of course, something you can readily do with Mif2Go, using the runfm program included with it. Quite a few of our customers, including Microsoft, run Mif2Go from their build system without difficulty, for several years now... ;-) If this is important to you, you might want to give Mif2Go another look. It's certainly *designed* for single-sourcing from Frame, like ePP, and unlike RH (even in TCS) or Flare. Not to mention being way less expensive than any of them... HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Two-column layout and large graphics
On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:22:27 -0600, "Linda G. Gallagher" wrote: >I have another question related to a layout that a client wants to use in >FM. Their documents are landscape, with two columns (not side heads). > >Sometimes a graphic, like a screenshot, is too big to fit in the column and >has to go across the columns. When I set the anchor tag to go across all >columns and the anchored frame to align left and not be cropped, I can get >the graphic to go across the two columns. Are there any other methods to get >the graphic across the two columns? I could not figure any others out. AFAIK, that's the only way, short of designing a special master page for every graphic like that. >After I do that, the text that came before the graphic spreads out across >the two columns above the graphic and the text that came after the graphic >spreads out into the two columns below the graphic. > >Is this normal for this type of layout? I rarely use two columns, and don't >have graphics that go across the two columns when I do. Yes, IMHO. >I think the client would prefer that the text in the left column continue >down the left column below the graphic, then continue to top of the right >column, then below the graphic in the right column. > >Is there a way to do that in FM? Not that I know of. But another possibility would be to set such graphics to go always to the top (or bottom) of the page. Then the question would be moot. ;-) HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Two-column layout and large graphics
On Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:20:51 -0600, "Linda G. Gallagher" wrote: >graphics to go always to the top (or bottom) of the page. > > >This might work. As I'm playing around with it, I'm not seeing a way to keep >the caption paragraph with the anchored frame as it moves to the top or >bottom of the page. True, that's a problem when you have captions. >I could put the caption inside the anchored frame (current caption style >doesn't have numbers). I think if we number the captions, the numbering >won't update from inside the anchored frame, right? IIRC, it *will* update, but may not be in the sequence you expect if there are other items using the same numbering series around. Two in a row on the same page may be numbered "backwards". >Any other way to keep the caption para with the moved anchored frame? The old standby is to use a one-celled table to package the frame and the caption, if the more limited table placement options work for you. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
ADVANCED QUESTION
On Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:26:38 +0100, Michael Zaichenko wrote: >i have an advanced question. Does anyone know how to control >mouse pointer in FrameMaker. FM has its own mouse pointer set >up i.e. it displays different pointer depending on an object >selected. I would like to expand this to custom made objects - >i.e. give a cursor different appearance when it is hovered >over a specific type of an object. > >Ideas? You can do this with Windows "hook" functions. Look up the way to use them in MSDN Help (comes with VS 6+) under SetWindowsHookEx. In essence, you intercept the message from Windows to Frame, then use the WinAPI to decide whether to change something or pass the message on, or both. This applies to any Windows program; it isn't Frame-specific. For the mouse, you get told where it is, but figuring out what is under it is your job. You can get the handle of the topmost window there, but Windows itself has no idea what Frame is displaying at that point, and Frame won't tell you in the FDK. Hmmm... ;-) Good luck! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Batch production of PDFs
On Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:05:52 +0100, "Charles Johnston" wrote: >We translate our manuals to 26 languages, which will (we're not there yet) >give us a need to batch-convert a large number of Frame books to PDF, after >which they will be e-mailed to the translators for review - very preferably >automatically. > >ePublisher AutoMap can do this, of course. However, for this >alone Quadralay's pricing is unrealistic. > >Can anyone recommend an alternative tool? Maybe just a plug-in to Frame that >supports batch PDF-generation of multiple books, Sure, runfm does batch production, including of PDF and print output. It's part of Mif2Go, but it's one of the many freebies in it, since it works fully with the demo version (with our blessings): http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm You do need to install the plugin DLLs, m*.dll, in your \frame\fminit\plugins dir, because runfm uses them to communicate with Frame. You also need to put runfm.exe in your \windows\system32 dir, but you don't need to install anything else. The documentation for runfm is in Chapter 34, "Converting via runfm", of the User's Guide, which is downloadable in a dozen formats on the same page above. >but the e-mail functionality would be very nice to have. Note that since you normally invoke runfm from a .bat, you can readily add any other system commands you please to the process. I'd be surprised if there wasn't a free utility around to send an email with an attachment from the command line... ;-) -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Unable to Build FM Book from Ditamap using Framemaker 8 and XP SP3
On Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:16:18 -0500, "Wright, Mary" wrote: >Has anyone encountered issues with Framemaker 8 and XP SP3 and the Build >FM Book from Ditamap function? I can use the Build FM document from >Ditamap function with no problem, but I get errors when I try to use the >Build FM Book from Ditmap function using the same ditamap and dita >files. You may want to try out Leximation's DITA-FMx, which fixes a great many problems with Frame's native DITA support for Frame 7.1, 7.2, and 8.x: http://www.leximation.com/dita-fmx/ Scott Prentice offers a 30-day free trial, and provides excellent support. Highly recommended for anyone seriously using DITA in structured Frame. -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Server-based (hosted) documentation and user comments (DocBook?)
On Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:49:55 -0400, "Shuttleworth, Roger" wrote: >There is an open-source DITA-to-wiki project under way that >claims to be able to round-trip between DITA (hence structured >Frame or XML editor) and wiki. See > http://development.lombardi.com/?p=68 >I have not used it, so cannot comment on its capabilities. That's very interesting! Thanks, Roger! In that case, the OP may want to check out Mif2Go, which provides top-notch conversion from UNstructured Frame to DITA 1.1, the current version of the standard. The free unlimited demo version, and the docs in many formats (including DITA), are available at: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm Note that Mif2Go is *way* less expensive than other possible options for getting to DITA from unstructured Frame docs. If you have structured Frame docs that are already set up for DITA instead, Mif2Go can still help, but in that case you should also look at DITA-FMx: http://www.leximation.com/dita-fmx/ Either way, going from DITA to/from wiki sounds like a very good way to go. While DocBook is a lot older, DITA can do everything DocBook can, and much much more. For a discussion on that point, see: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/message/12132 HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
MIF to SGML/XML
On Wed, 3 Sep 2008 09:37:07 -0400, "Butler, Darren J CTR USAF AFMC 584 CBSS/GBHAC" wrote: >Does anyone know of an application that converts MIF to XML As Art said, Mif2Go does that job. It does it for both structured and unstructured Frame files, effectively, with minimal configuration, and very quickly. The best way to see if it suits your needs is to try it yourself. The free unlimited demo version is at: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm What specific flavor of XML are you using? Is it DITA, DocBook, your own format, or what? That makes a big difference in selecting the most appropriate tool. Also, is your intent to migrate from Frame to another application, or to single-source from Frame and support XML output on demand? Those two processes make real different demands on your toolchain, time, and budget. Post back to the list on those two points, and you may get more precise assistance. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
InDesign as a replacement for Framemaker
On Fri, 12 Sep 2008 08:46:29 -0700, Dov Isaacs wrote: >I hardly see how your request is related to "natural >justice" any more or less than a request to also allow simultaneous >activation of the same license of FrameMaker on computers used by other >members of your family. Really, Dov? The first complies with the spirit, if not the letter, of the EULA. The second is an obvious violation. No difference??? Unbelievable. And just how many other *family members* are going to use Frame, for God's sake? Mif2Go has a very effective system of license control; it's called the "Honor System". It works. It's the only method we could find that does not interfere with usage by our licensed customers. We trust you. Impractical, you say? Wake up! Pirates can break *any* system you use in less than an hour. And broken copies of Adobe apps are available all over the Web; we must get fifty spams a day offering them. So the only folks your anti-piracy measures affect are your *honest* users. You might think that with such an arrangement, people would never buy a second license in the same company. Why would they, if all they had to do was copy from their colleague? Guess what; it doesn't happen. We have more license purchases for *additional* copies than for singles. If you treat people as honest, they *are*. If you treat them like criminals, well... you say more about yourself than about them. -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
ePublisher Pro vs. other generated online help
On Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:58:51 -0700, "Callie Bertsche" wrote: >- Have other products sharpened their competitive edge since our last >tool decision (a few years ago)? For instance, comparisons with MadCap >or Flare? > >In considering a new product, I know immediately I value the following: > >- Dynamic connection with FrameMaker documents (ability to rescan/update >files in help project file) >- Ability to set variables and conditions or pass them through from the >document, in a user-friendly manner, when building the help You might look at Mif2Go, if you haven't lately. It does both of those things, and in fact everything that ePP does with FrameMaker, and more. (ePP can also process other XML sources, and Word source docs, which Mif2Go does not; we're FrameMaker-only). Mif2Go is also a lot more affordable, way faster, and we think produces better output. Try the free unlimited demo, and see for yourself: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm >Thanks for any "help" on the help anyone has time to give! HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
FM8 HTML output
On Sat, 13 Sep 2008 14:53:23 -0600, "Combs, Richard" wrote: >Better: If you have to buy new FM licenses anyway, you should seriously >consider the Adobe Technical Communication Suite instead. It includes >versions of FM and RoboHelp that are tightly integrated (or so I'm told; >we're still looking into it here, but are likely to upgrade to the suite >soon). > >IMHO, YMMV, etc. Best: ;-) Check out Mif2Go; at $295, it's about 1/10 the price of ePP, and 1/3 the price of the TCS. It generates very clean HTML, XML, DITA, DocBook, and numerous Help formats (including Eclipse Help and OHJ; more outputs than any of the other options, in fact). It also produces Word files that look remarkably like the Frame files from which they were made, handy for reviewers who only use Word. The free unlimited demo version is at: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm And Mif2Go comes with the best free support in the industry; who else fixes bugs on the spot (not "in the next version"), and adds features you ask for overnight? See the history.txt file there for numerous examples of those enhancements, with the names of those who asked for them. ;-) HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Reference graphic to Character format
On Mon, 15 Sep 2008 10:59:14 -0400, "Grinnell Larry-ELG001" wrote: >Need to repurpose your content for HTML or other like formats. Custom >(vector) fonts don't work in a rasterized online world. You need to find >a way to substitute back in either a vector-based graphic which can be >auto-scaled in products like ePublisher or even FrameMaker's very flawed >Save-As-HTML function, or substitute a raster file (JPEG) for each >occurrence of a custom font character. We are looking at several very >expensive solutions to permit us to offer HTML and similar deliverables >(you don't want to know what we do and how much we currently spend to >convert a document to HTML). You don't need an expensive solution for that. Mif2Go, at $295 per seat, lets you map any character in any font, or group of fonts, to a graphic, or indeed to any HTML or XML code you please. See the User's Guide, par. 20.5.6, "Mapping characters in a special font", for the details. For example: [MacroFonts] ; Frame font name = section to use for mapping chars in that font Wingdings = WingChars [WingChars] ; char n maps to a square bullet, char p to a graphic: n = x25a0 p = You can download the free unlimited demo version of Mif2Go, and the User's Guide in numerous formats, from: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Odd cross-ref substitution 7.2
On Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:49:19 +0300, "David Kuhn" wrote: >I do have a larger issue, though with the symbols. >Sometimes I find it very difficult to tell what they are doing there. >The upside down T is conditional text. >The right-side up T is a cross-reference marker. Nope! *All* the right-side-up T's are markers. If you have two in a row, the T's are superimposed, so you can never see how many you really have. To avoid this, some folks make a point of separating markers by at least one printable char, so you may get something like this: MyT HeTadTinTgT Conditional text markers display like any other marker type. The upside-down T's are *anchors*, like for a ship. ;-) They appear where you have inserted a table or an anchored frame; the table or image itself may well be elsewhere on the page, or even on the next page. But if you select the anchor, you'll see the corresponding table or image selected. Anchors overlap like markers, so you may want to use the same trick as for markers to keep them separated. The reason they overlap, BTW, is because Frame needs to keep the line breaks and positioning accurate to the printed doc; if the markers and anchors took up space, the rendering would be thrown off. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
ePublisher Pro vs. other generated online help
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:49:35 -0600, Patrick Fortino wrote: [Amusing rant snipped.] Since you mention Mif2Go below, a few comments... OK, it turned out to be more than a few. ;-) >However, now that you know my opinion of Webworks as a company, I will >admit that the new epubisher a pretty nice tool. I had a hard time >getting used to the new interface, but once I did, it converted my fm >books pretty flawlessly. With Webworks Publisher, I would have to do >extensive template modificaitons to get the html output to look the >way I wanted it to look. But with epub, the output was almost perfect >without any mods. That's also the case with Mif2Go, for many outputs. It really depends on the complexity of your Frame files, and on the number of bells and whistles you want added. Many folks tell us they are producing deliverable output 15 minutes after download of the Mif2Go distro. I wouldn't count on that , but it's way simpler than other alternatives, IMHO. >And it was VERY EASY to set up a multi-volume help >project (one with many different books). Because I was helping to set >up this project for users who beginner frame and webworks users, ease >of use was VERY important. It's almost trivial to use the same settings for multiple projects; we do that all the time, using conversion templates (Frame files) and configuration templates (shared .ini files). >epub is also much faster than wwpub pro at converting fm books. A real >plus when you are developing a new project and need to generate output >many times a day. That's always been one of Mif2Go's strengths; it's *very* fast. It leads to a more productive mode of working, where you can edit one setting then rerun the project to see the effect... in a minute or two. Not after going out for lunch. >One of the best things about epub, compared to robo help is that it >uses your frame docs as the source. Last I checked, robo help still >only uses the frame docs to import the project. Once imported, you >have two content sources: robo help and frame. > >I haven't use flare so can't comment on it. Both RH and Flare are designed as stand-alone authoring apps. They "import" Frame, but require some work in their own system after every import before you get the output you want. Both WWP and Mif2Go regard Frame as the authoring app, so you are always ready to run with the latest content edits. It's a fundamental design choice. >I tried mif2go; it can almost do what epub can do, Really? We think it does *more*. More formats for sure; for one thing, nobody else does Word output from Frame at *all*. Then there's DITA and DocBook from UNstructured Frame, Oracle Help for Java (a better JavaHelp), WinHelp (still needed for some older apps), and Eclipse (which we added two years ago and which ePP added this summer...). And our Open Source Web help system, OmniHelp, loads a lot faster than any other browser-based system, and does more for you... See what it does with our 1000-page User's Guide: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/omnihelp.htm >but requires a LOT more mucking around in the code. LOL! There's no "code" to muck around in; it's all in compiled C++, not an interpreted template language like WWP used. (That's one reason for the speed difference.) There *are* settings needed to control various features in the .ini files, but they are no more complex than a mapping table has to be, like: [ParaStyles] Heading 1=H1 And our Setup looks at your doc and makes reasonable guesses about what those should be. You *can* do a lot more there if you want, but you don't *have* to. >If price is your bottom line, it might be worth looking at. But >I'd be willing to bet that if you keep track of your hours learning >mif2go versus epub, the cost difference would be negligible. Hardly! We start off at around 1/5 of ePP ($295; the price of ePP is not listed on its Web site), *include* a year of support (which most customers never need to use, BTW, thanks to a very thorough User's Guide) and of *all* upgrades. And then we let you continue with support and upgrades forever at $75/year. The truth is, you can equip a whole workgroup with Mif2Go licenses for less than *one* ePP license. And many major corps have realized that. One reason we can give free copies, with full support, to the unemployed and academics, is that the corporate world supports us very well indeed. >So that's the sad story. Because webworks is the only game in town, >they can get away with their Draconian licensing practices. Only as long as *you* choose to support those practices. ;-) All the best! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
conversion tables
On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:27:27 -0500, Mollye Barrett wrote: > I have a large group of docs (100's of docs with 100's of pages) to >convert from unstructured to structured Frame and need some examples >for syntax in the table. I get about 50% of the way but need to start >promoting and nesting. > > I must use a modification of XDocBook. Any samples/examples are >appreciated! (Info with Frame is very limited.) Hi Mollye! IMHO, the whole conversion table method is very limited, not just the docs for it. Another possibility is to use Mif2Go to produce DocBook XML from your unstructured files, then bring that back into structured Frame. It should be a lot faster. You can try it out with the free unlimited demo version at: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm The User's Guide, Chapter 16, "Producing DocBook XML", is very thorough. You can download the User's Guide in numerous formats (including DocBook itself ;-) from the same page. The same method, BTW, works nicely for moving from unstructured to structured Frame using DITA. We worked with members of both OASIS TC's developing it... HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
FW: Russian Frame->ePublisher problem
On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:18:54 -0500, "Alison Carrico" wrote: >Thanks to everyone who responded. The answer seems to be upgrading to >the most recent version because WW 9.2 doesn't officially support Frame >8 & Frame 7 doesn't support Russian. Actually, we've been doing Russian for years in FM7 and even FM6. You just need to use a Cyrillic font; any of the fonts with names ending in CYR will do (Windows code page 1251). FM8 improves the Russian support, by using Unicode directly. But you can do almost everything you can do in FM8 in the earlier versions. The only difference I recall is that two fairly obscure characters used in the Ukrainian dialect were inaccessible because Frame reserved their code points in the Cyrillic font mapping. Mif2Go, BTW, works with all versions of Frame and handles Cyrillic just fine. You might want to try it (free): http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm It's a lot less expensive than the ePP upgrade, and does more for you. IMHO. ;-) -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Mif2Go Content Models
On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 08:52:54 -0400, "Denise Kadilak" wrote: >I'm a very new user of Mif2Go - trying to test it a bit and see if this >is a direction we should consider. My current goal is to produce DITA >XML from structured FrameMaker files, and following the Mif2Go User's >Guide, I'm trying to generate a content model from our DTD. You only need to do that if you have specialized from the standard DITA DTDs. If you are just using the OASIS DTDs, the content models are built in to Mif2Go, for both 1.0 and 1.1. >The User's Guide refers me to the dtd2ini.txt file for instructions on >producing the content model configuration file, and this txt file >instructs me to download the XML parser RXP. The instructions claim the >download is available on the OMSYS download page - I don't' see it. I >attempted to locate a Windows download on the internet - I can't find >one. All you need is on our download page under "XML Utilities": http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm#XML_Downloads You should need only two of the four .zips, dtd2ini02win.zip and contentmodels.zip. Perhaps what confused you was this in dtd2ini.txt (which is in the dtd2ini02win.zip on the above page): dtd2ini is based on the validating XML parser RXP. We wish to thank Richard Tobin, the author of RXP, for creating that parser, and for his kind advice during development of dtd2ini. RXP is open source, licensed under the GPL v.2, and therefore dtd2ini is also open source under the same license. Both the current Windows executable and the full C source are available on Omni Systems' web site, and are freely downloadable without any obligation, from: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm This is *not* telling you to download RXP; that's not necessary, since dtd2ini.exe, furnished in the same .zip, *contains* all the RXP code needed. The reason you need to download dtd2ini separately from the regular Mif2Go package is licensing. We can't legally include a GPL program in the same .zip as a commercial product. We're a bit fanatical about respecting software licenses, including the GPL, so it's a .zip of its own. That is also why we have another .zip next to it with the full C source code for dtd2ini; that too is required by the GPL. If anyone does want to download RXP itself, it is available at: http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~richard/rxp.html Again, it is *not* necessary to do that to use Mif2Go or dtd2ini. >The instructions in the txt file are a little messy in general, but now >I'm worrying that they may also be out-of-date. Does anyone have some >advice on the Mif2Go documentation in general or my problem >specifically? I'm also very prepared to accept full responsibility for >this confusion. I fear I may be in over my head with this tool. Sorry! I'm personally responsible for that .txt file, which is an object lesson on why programmers should not write docs. Mea culpa! The primary Mif2Go doc, the 1000-page User's Guide, is much better, because it was written by a real TW. Imagine that! ;-) Please feel free to write us directly if you have any other problems! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
ePublisher Pro vs. other generated online help
On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:01:44 -0400, "Rick Quatro" wrote: >I respectfully disagree with the idea of "vendor interference". Since >third-party products related to FrameMaker are part of many workflows, I >don't think it is inappropriate at all to talk about them on the list. Obviously, I agree. That applies to *any* third-party product. >To put the shoe on the other foot, if someone posts a difficulty with their >MIF2Go process, and you know that ePublisher can solve their problem, I >think it is more than appropriate for you to point this out. Absolutely! I'd want to know about that too. We *do* give referrals to other vendors when we know of something they do that we don't, or that they do better. That has included Quadralay. For example, ePP works with Word as source; we don't. If you have both Frame and Word docs going into the same Help system, you should certainly consider using ePP for that. >Although some may see this as self-serving on your part, it still serves >the overall purpose of the list, which is to help people solve FrameMaker- >related problems. Exactly; that's the bottom line. >We all know that Jeremy is biased towards MIF2Go, Yep. At least, I'm way more *familiar* with it than I am with other options. ;-) I can't browse the C++ source of any other plugin... >but I still find it beneficial to read how it may solve a particular >problem. This kind of information can be valuable for me down the road. Right. And for the vendors themselves, it may suggest areas where they can improve. This helps everyone. >If he, or any other vendor, overstates their case, there are others on >the list that can and should point that out. Right again. This list serves as a reality check for vendor claims. >Overall, I think it is good practice for vendors to monitor the FrameMaker >lists and be ready to contribute, especially if the discussion involves >their products. It gives them credibility as being in touch with FrameMaker >users and ready to help provide solutions. It gives them even more credibility, as members of the community, if they *also* post on points unrelated to their products where they happen to have expertise. After a while, you get to know who is on top of various aspects of Frame. For example, I'm not going to post about FrameScript because I know Rick will, and he's the expert on it. But I will post about FM8 Unicode issues that are unrelated to conversion because I know those very well. Thank you, Rick, for a clear and cogent analysis! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Problem printing Unicode Character
On Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:39:30 +0200, wrote: >I have a problem printing some Unicode character. For exemple, the character >U0101 (Latin Small Letter A With Macron) print correctly in Times New Roman, >but with another font (Caecilia LT CE 55 Roman for exemple), I got another >character. > >But, it's printing correctly from Illustrator... > >Could it be a bug form Frame or I missed something ? > >I'm working on Windows XP SP2 and Frame 8.0p277. Since you are using Frame 8, you are using the Unicode character set internally. TNR, and most other standard MS fonts, support that. However, fonts that use a different character set do not. Your "Caecilia LT CE 55 Roman" font uses code page 1250; that's what the "CE" in its name means. And it happens that for U+0101, there is *no* mapping in CP1250... so you will not get "small a macron", because it isn't there. In fact, it's not in *any* of the code page based fonts. U+0103 is in 1250, and you might get away with using that (small a breve). Your best bet is to stick with Unicode fonts, and not try to use others that are CE, CYR, GRK, etc. The code page system was made to provide access to characters within an 8-bit space, and it required remapping of various groups of Unicode characters to fit into that space. Frame 7 and earlier supported that, but Frame 8 does not. Even if you have to replace some fonts, it's best to move on. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
FrameVector graphics
On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 09:50:29 -0700, William Abernathy wrote: >I can tell you that the figures list their object type as FrameVector with no >referenced file. They present themselves as unary graphical blobs, which do >not >respond to my FrameMaker (7.2 on Win XP) graphics tools. > >Is there any way to fix these? Can I export them to some other format? Or do I >have to redraw them from scratch? FrameVector is usually present in conjunction with another format, either a vector format like WMF or possibly native Frame vector objects. If you'd like to send me one of the files off-list, in a .zip, I'll have a look and tell you more about what you have. More generally, it's always possible to export such graphics in another format using Frame's native graphic export filters. The demo version of Mif2Go will do that for you, for free: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm In the User's Guide, see par. 29.2, "Converting and exporting graphics", for more considerations and instructions on that. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Importing files into FM8
On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:23:01 +1300 (NZDT), "Alan Litchfield" wrote: >When importing multiple files into a new FM 8 book the files are entered in >precisely the reverse alpha-numeric order according to their file names. > >They have been named "Sect n1 Chap n2.fm" so that each section is comprised of >more than one chapter. They are followed by Preface.fm, Glossary.fm,... that >get added in that order. > >What needs to be done to change the order so that they are added in ascending >order, rather than descending? You are dragging them from an Explorer window, right? Try reversing the name sequence in Explorer by clicking on the Name header before you select them. When I do that here, I get them added to the book in the same order as in the Explorer window, regardless of how I select them (click/ shift-click or multiple ctrl-clicks). HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Graphics Fundamentals
On Fri, 3 Apr 2009 13:08:15 -0700, "Diane Gaskill" wrote: >We are converting some word docs to FM. The graphics files are embedded in >word and we have no idea what the original tool was to create the graphics. >When we import the word doc into FM, the MS2007 filter in FM does a good >job. It creates frames and places the same embedded graphics in the frames. >Does FM know at this point what the original graphics file format is and >will Mif2Go extract the graphics to the original file format? Or am I >wishing for too much. No, that should work. Internally, Word uses WMF, a vector format, to hold graphics. So you may be getting the Word graphics as WMF. Or as something else; that's up to the import filter. Possibly even the original format imported into Word, since, unlike Frame, Word does retain the name of the imported file. In any case, what you will get from the Mif2Go export is whatever is there in Frame. Internally, Frame stores the embedded images as graphic insets. While they don't have the original file name, they do retain the original data, just in Frame's own (lossless) encoding. So we can get it out and save it in its originally-imported (into Frame) format, with a new name. Just try it and see what happens. You don't have to know the format in advance, just tell Mif2Go to export everything, including OLE objects, and see what you get. ;-) -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Framescript to remove all images (but leave the AFrames)
On Wed, 8 Apr 2009 18:25:00 +0200, Yves Barbion wrote: >I've got a HUGE FrameMaker-file (880 MB!) which I converted from Word. Of >course, all images are "copied into document", which is the reason why it's >so big. > >Does anyone have a Framescript he/she wishes to share which removes all >images from the frames, but which also leaves the AFrames intact? Hi Yves! You already have a tool that does this, Mif2Go. ;-) Set it to export all graphics, per User's Guide par. 2.5.3, "Replacing embedded graphics with referenced graphics". Then go through the doc in Frame; as you come to each graphic, select it (the image, *not* the anchored frame), identify the appropriate exported image (which is in the original format it had when imported), and File > Import. You won't have to fix your scaling or anything else. BTW, for others with this issue, it also works fine in the demo version; you don't need to buy a copy of Mif2Go to use it for this purpose. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Framescript to remove all images (but leave the AFrames)
On Thu, 9 Apr 2009 08:35:02 +0200, Yves Barbion wrote: >Thank you for your help, but I'm afraid I cannot use MIF2Go for this job. >This is what I read in the MIF2Go Help: > >"If your document contains many images that were imported into FrameMaker by >copying instead of by reference, and these embedded images have not been >embellished in FrameMaker with callouts or other added features, you might >want to consider replacing them with referenced graphics." Actually, that "embellished" part is not a reason to keep the graphics embedded; you can use callouts with referenced graphics exactly the same as with embedded, and the process I suggested will work fine with them. The comment in the User's Guide is related to a different issue, one that's not relevant here. >Well, the images have been "embellished" (I like the word) with callouts... >in Word ;-( And it's even worse, because the images have also been cropped >in Word and the pictures have been taken at a ridiculously high resolution >for their purpose: 10 x 15 inches @ 300 dpi, where their actual size in the >FM document should be 2.5 x 1.5 inches and 150 dpi should be more than >enough for PDF and laser print output. None of that matters at all. Have you actually *tried* the process I suggested? If you leave the embedded images in place until you select and replace them with the referenced copies Mif2Go makes for you, the referenced graphics will have *exactly* the same settings as the embedded ones do. You will not see any visible difference at all. But your Frame file will be a lot smaller, and more stable. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Using the FDK to manipulate Graphics in FrameMaker 7x...
On Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:30:12 -0400, Dan Glover wrote: >We're trying to use the FDK to get at the contents of graphics in a >document. The graphics are pasted in the document, and have a facet >type of OLE2. We do that in Mif2Go, but not in the FDK plugin. We do it while processing the MIF. From Frame's FDK, a facet is an opaque container. But in MIF, you can see them all. >Unfortunately, the FDK docs don't give much >information about facets. I can get data out of a facet if I know >its name. For example, F_ApiGetUBytesByName() uses the docId and >objId for the graphic object, and then the facet name to get the >given data. I manage to use "OLE2" for a facet name, and that works >for FrameMaker 7.2. But it doesn't work for FrameMaker 7.0! The FDK >docs don't describe facet names anywhere, and I have no way to know >why it works for one version and not another. I can only assume that >OLE2 wasn't supported in 7.0??? I tried OLE2, OLE1, and OLE with no >luck. I can get TIFF and DIB facets out of 7.0, though. An OLE facet is really a little file system, using a proprietary and undocumented Microsoft file system. We reverse-engineered it before that became illegal under the DMCA. It was a long, nasty job. The only Frame docs I know of on facets are in the "Integrating Applications with FrameMaker" book published by Frame Tech in December 1989. Print only. I believe Adobe discontinued it. >A related issue... I want to extract the bitmap representation of >the OLE image, and create a separate file without the OLE >information. But since I have no idea what the facet data looks >like, I don't know what to save to the file and what to throw >away. Is there any way to learn about what's actually inside an image facet? An OLE facet contains several "files" in its system, and at least one of them is WMF, used to provide the display you see in Frame when you are not editing the object. We scan the files and try to identify the correct WMF (there may be several); as an option, we'll write out *all* the WMFs we see in there. There's one case where it's very simple, discovered by a customer of ours: Visio. It turns out that Visio uses the OLE format as its own native file type. So if you export the OLE facets with Mif2Go (which can be done using the free demo version), you can rename them form .ole to .vsd and they will work. >Thanks for any info or experiences... HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Usage of WebWorks (ePublisher)
On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:13:06 -0400, Jim Owens wrote: >Nancy mentioned that her client insists on Webworks 7, so all other >options are moot. > >Without knowing anything about the situation, I'd still venture that >it's not in her client's interest to use something that's been >discontinued. Can they be talked into a more sensible decision? I just checked in the FM7 book Sarah O'Keefe wrote, and it appears Webworks *Standard*, the one Nancy was "required" to use, does not even support HTML Help at all. You'd have to use the regular HTML output, then create the index, toc, project file, alias and map files by hand, or at best do it with HTML Help Workshop, which is almost as bad. If the client is merely trying to save money by using a "free" tool, we'll *give* her a copy of Mif2Go. Nobody should have to go through that process to keep a job... -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Usage of WebWorks (ePublisher)
On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:37:06 -0500 (CDT), Nancy Allison wrote: >Jeremy, do you really mean it? I would be thrilled. Of course I mean it! The next two posts will contain the password and download instructions. (But we won't CC the list with those, sorry folks! If you're an unemployed TW, or an underemployed consultant, write to with subject Mif2Go and you can get one too. We've been doing that for years. ;-) >I think I could convince them to accept it. I think. They'd be fools not to agree to something that would save them a lot of money (for your extra time). But we already knew that about them. So you can always *tell* them you used WWP and did some "cleanup", and bill them accordingly, then use Mif2Go and do it all in an hour. When they have the group secretary do the next update, to save more money, they will find out what they were demanding. Perhaps. ;-) -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Usage of WebWorks (ePublisher)
On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:32:12 -0600, Patrick Fortino wrote: >But imagine it's 1986 and you are in a computer store looking at >computers. I can't resist. ;-) In 1986, I was working at a company that had pretty much standardized on Macs. People loved them. I had one of the older DOS boxes, with a special drive that allowed it to read and write Mac disks (for conversion purposes). Macs were so "special" other machines couldn't read the disks at all, even at the record level, much less write to them. >One the hand, you have DOS with it's blinking cursor waiting for >instructions from you. If only you knew what those instructions were. Yes, it did call for knowing what you were doing. ;-) But so did the Mac. How long did it take *you* to figure out that the way to eject a floppy, other than the paperclip taped to every Mac, was to drag it to the Trash??? This was intuitive? >On the other hand, you have a Mac Plus, it's friendly face and graphic >interface inviting you to experiment. Both computers will pretty much >do what you want, the big difference being ease of use and cost. Macs >were easier to use and cost a LOT more (I'm not trying to start a >windows v mac battle here: I use both and think they are now pretty >even on ease of use). Back then, Macs had another interesting feature. If anything went wrong during a write to the floppy, a daily event, the entire disk became unusable. You discovered this the next time you inserted your wonderful project, and the Mac offered to format the "damaged" disk for you. You could literally hear the screams from one end of the office to the other. So on that DOS box, I studied the Mac filesystem on the disks. After a while I worked out the rules for it (Apple wouldn't tell you, unlike, say, IBM), and wrote a simple program to fix up a very common (and harmless) error made by the Mac if it wasn't totally done with the disk before it was removed. (It wasn't updating the free list until then, so a block just written would be in both the used and free lists, and the Mac threw up its hands. I just removed any used blocks from the free list and updated it.) After a while there was a steady stream of folks with tearstained faces gingerly clutching a floppy coming to my desk. It took a few seconds for my program to fix them up. They went back to work on the easier-to-use system... much happier. My point? It's *not* that easier is worse. It's that every tool has its use, and if you master them all, you are better off than those who limit themselves to one. Even if you think it's the easiest. ;-) And what did you expect, on Friday afternoon? -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Usage of WebWorks (ePublisher)
On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:15:42 -0400, Writer wrote: >Tell us another story from the old days, Grandpa. > >Nadine, who also could not resist ;-) LOL! Actually, I may get to be a great-grandpa soon, if my grandson gets married as young as I did... And you *don't* want to get me started... ;-) -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Working with MIFs in Frame
On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:53:33 -0700, Shane Lawrence wrote: >I currently use a program to dynamically generate a book and several .mif >files for its content. I have an index that needs to be generated, and of >course, Frame doesn't like it when I try to 'Update Book and generate lists >and indexes'. It states 'Couldn't update this book, because it contains no >openable nongenerated files.' I have to open all files in book, then save all >files in book (as fm) and confirms each file. It's a lot of clicking and I'm >hoping to find a way around this. > >Is there a way in Framemaker to batch convert all of these files back to fm, >or a method to continue to work purely with mif files? The mif files actually >have the .fm extension already. The free Mif2Go demo version will do that for you. No need to purchase Mif2Go for this; just download the demo from: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm Install the plugin (the two DLLs that go in your \frame\fminit\plugins directory), delete .cache there (if it is present), and start Frame. Open your book, and with Shift down, select File > Wash via MIF. This actually opens the .fm files (it's fine that they are really MIF), resaves as MIF, reopens those, and saves them as .fm, all in a second or two, for the whole book. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Frame-to-PDF mini-docs
On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:54:22 -0400, Art Campbell wrote: >Another route may exist through MIF2Go... I think you could set up an >export to MIF, RTF, or HTML that would create break points on your >DocTitle paratags. Generate a PDF of those files (probably using >Acrobat's watched folders), and you're good. Mif2Go doesn't split up MIF or RTF outputs, only HTML/XML outputs. So you would need to convert to, say, HTML, then make PDFs of the HTML files, either directly (using Acrobat, if it can do that, or another tool that does that), or indirectly (importing the HTML files to Frame or Word, and making the PDFs from there). The Mif2Go part is easy, but the next step may require scripting of some sort (JS, VBA, FrameScript) to avoid a lot of manual work. -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Cross-ref formats
On Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:33:19 -0500 (CDT), Nancy Allison wrote: >I'm setting up a template and am trying to figure out a way to >avoid having to create multiple x-refs to accommodate different >punctuation. > . . . >What is your solution? Simple; I follow International English (UK) usage, and keep the punctuation *outside* the quotes: ---See Appendix D,?"Frying Pans and Toasters", for more information. ---For more information, see Appendix D,?"Frying Pans and Toasters". Most of the world, including those in the US, won't even notice. And it is more logical; the punctuation is *not*, after all, part of the quoted information. Consider: ---I don't know why she said "No!" ---I don't know why she said "No"! The meaning is different. In the first case, the speaker exclaimed. In the second, the narrator is exclaiming instead. Use the one that describes the situation more accurately. I'd even revise the first one so as to remove all doubt, as: ---I don't know why she said "No!". which makes it clear that the speaker, not the narrator, was doing the exclaiming. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Cross-ref formats
On Wed, 5 Aug 2009 11:23:06 -0400, Art Campbell wrote: >I believe an option within MIF2Go allows you to automagically impose a >template of your choice on a book, so the conversion between multiple >output types is transparent. Haven't played with it in a while, >though, but I think it's still there... Yes, it is. It applies the templates just for that conversion, not permanently. It does this "automagic" by saving the .fm file (if it has been edited) first, then applying the template, saving as MIF, and finally closing the original .fm file without saving to discard the template changes from it. Mif2Go then proceeds with the conversion using the MIF. So you never forget to apply a template. ;-) It also does updates and generates the book before conversions, if you set it to. Those changes *do* persist. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Upgrading FM from 7.1 to 9
On Tue, 1 Dec 2009 15:48:30 -0800, "Lea Rush" wrote: >I did a comparison of RH vs. Mif2Go at the beginning of the year, and the >biggest difference I found was that RH supported Natural Language search. >Does Mif2Go support that, or will it? If I understand you correctly, you are talking about WebHelp search, right? So you are comparing RH WebHelp with OmniHelp. (For other Help formats, like HTML Help, search is built in so that it is the same regardless of the tool used.) One difference is that OmniHelp is Open Source (LGPL), and RH WebHelp is proprietary. That means that with OmniHelp, you can add any search engine you please, by modifying the JavaScript. It's not trivial, but it's certainly possible. For OmniHelp, our goal is to make it very fast to respond, because people using Help systems want to find the info they need quickly and get on with the job they are doing. So we do all the search indexing at authoring time, and provide a JavaScript array, ready to use, so that search even of large docs is instantaneous. That approach pretty much limits you to keyword search (including regex), which we feel is a very reasonable price to pay for the high speed. We also feel that an index, properly done, is superior to any form of search. So we're not inclined to invest the time needed to implement "Natural Language" search in OmniHelp ourselves. It would slow down searches, especially on large doc sets, dramatically, for a rather questionable benefit. However, anyone who really wants it can certainly add it as an option, and redistribute the result legally, which may not be possible under less permissive licenses. And, of course, there are quite a few other differences that we consider much more significant... but that's your call. ;-) HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Disappearing anchored frames: strange FrameMaker bug
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:57:01 +, Steve Rickaby wrote: >the only unusual thing about this book is that >the source files were brought in from Word via RTF That could very likely be the culprit. The RTF and Word import filters are VERY BAD, and introduce many strange artifacts into the resulting Frame file. These can and will bite you again and again. MIF washing will do no good. That's why we strongly advise people to do all Word import by copying the Word doc content and using Paste Special to put it in as "Plain Text". It's the only way we know to avoid the sort of pain you are experiencing now. It may seem to take longer to do it that way, but it gives you a nice stable document, and that's well worth it. Even at this point, you might still consider that, but after you've put a lot of work in it's harder to bring yourself to do it... -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Disappearing anchored frames: strange FrameMaker bug
On Mon, 7 Dec 2009 08:44:33 +, Steve Rickaby wrote: >At 13:44 -0800 4/12/09, Jeremy H. Griffith wrote: > >> >the only unusual thing about this book is that >>>the source files were brought in from Word via RTF >> >>That could very likely be the culprit. The RTF and Word >>import filters are VERY BAD, and introduce many strange >>artifacts into the resulting Frame file. These can and >>will bite you again and again. MIF washing will do no good. > >Ah. Will anything else? Not that I know of, unless someone has developed a plugin to deal with this. Or written a FrameScript to do the process, which I think is possible. >>That's why we strongly advise people to do all Word >>import by copying the Word doc content and using Paste >>Special to put it in as "Plain Text". It's the only way >>we know to avoid the sort of pain you are experiencing >>now. It may seem to take longer to do it that way, but >>it gives youa nice stable document,and that's well worth it. > >Noted. > >>Even at this point, you might still consider that, but >>after you've put a lot of work in it's harder to bring >>yourself to do it... > >I cannot do that at this stage from the Word sources, as >the book has been heavily edited (and typeset). Would >cutting and pasting from the FrameMaker document into a >clean new FrameMaker document and reformatting work? Yes. It doesn't matter where you get the plain text from. I'd suggest if you go that way, use Frame to convert all your tables to text first; then on the other end, convert back to tables. That should minimize the pain for them. The graphics I'd reimport, especially since that's where your problem manifested. Hopefully you don't have callouts to create... You might want to try it on a page or two first, to get a feel for how much work is involved. If it's a lot, well, Rick Quattro develops plugins for such tasks at reasonable cost... but it may be less trouble than it sounds like. Worst case, if it doesn't help, you'll know for sure that it's a Frame bug. -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
DITA File - FDK Programming
On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:56:22 -0500, "Shanmugham Subbaiyan" wrote: >Note: I'm referring "FDK Programmer's reference" and "FDK Programmer's >guide". So far I could not find anything much useful for me. Questions involving the FDK are best asked on: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/frame_dev/ I'm not familiar with the APIs for structure, but many others there are. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Something that makes no sense in spell check
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:27:40 +, Steve Rickaby wrote: You *do* have an extra space after the period after the xref: > You might try removing it in the MIF. It might be something other than a space, though it comes across as one in the email; try replacing both chars with a real space. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Footnote Out of Sequence
On Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:55:18 +, "Christopher Seal" wrote: >I had an instance where I had to replicate a published report, and that >report had Tables with footnotes as part of the regular footnote sequence. >In FM this was not possible so I faked it as follows. I created a real >footnote in the anchor paragraph for the table, and coloured the in-text >footnote number white so it wouldn't show. Then I added a superscript number >(same as the footnote number) in the table to make the reader think this was >the real reference. Clever! The problem is that the number in the table won't link to the footnote, but people may overlook that. However, with one slight change you could make that work too. Instead of putting in a text superscript number in the table, use a cross-reference to the real footnote. A second potential issue is that white text may become visible under some conditions (like a non-white background), and can be found in searches. You can minimize the chance of that happening by hiding the anchor para behind the table. Use negative space below equal to the line height for the anchor para, and the same negative amount for space above the table. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Frame reference book
On Wed, 4 Feb 2009 15:47:43 -0600, "Raymond, Michael" wrote: >I am fairly new to Frame. I'm looking for a good book that will help me >sharpen my Frame skills and also be a good reference guide. I have Frame >7.1. Any suggestions? Yes. Get O'Keefe and Loring, "FrameMaker 7: The Complete Reference", ISBN 0-07-222361-8, published by Osborne/McGraw Hill, which has now been republished as "Publishing Fundamentals: FrameMaker 7", ISBN 0970473338, at: http://www.scriptorium.com/books/fm7/index.html They also have an excellent book on Frame 8, "Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8", ISBN 9780970473349, at: http://www.scriptorium.com/books/fm8/unstrfm8.html In addition, they offer their workbooks for free on a wiki: http://wiki.scriptorium.com/tiki-index.php HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
PDF to Word Conversion
On Mon, 9 Feb 2009 10:28:13 -0500, wrote: > I have been working on a manual for a while now, the manual is >projected to be over 2000 pages to include, photographs, autocad >drawings and diagrams. My client decided Friday that he now wants the >entire document in word. As everyone else has said, this is a very, very, very Bad Idea. Word is simply not stable enough to use for docs that size, let alone the fact that it lacks so many common Frame features that you will spend much of your editing time gritting your teeth to avoid screaming... Ask him *why* he wants it in Word? If it's because he wants to edit using Word's Track Changes, fine, you can give him a Word copy, made with Mif2Go, any time he wants one. (Make one Word file per chapter, *not* one file of the whole book.) Then he can edit, send it back, and you can make his changes into proper writing when you edit them into the Frame version. Many of our customers use that workflow, and it works well. >Is there anyway I could convert it to word, >that will not be time consuming, or does anyone know any software that >will convert a pdf to word and retain all formatting, graphics, etc. I >tried saving the pdf as a word document, but a lot of the formatting was >off. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Going via PDF is another Bad Idea, because PDF is, as Dov said, a "final format", designed for print. It is *not* an interchange format. Frame's native RTF export leaves a lot behind. Mif2Go does too, since there is nowhere to put a lot of Frame information in Word, but what does get there is complete, accurate, and looks remarkably like the Frame document it came from. You can try the free demo at: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm and see for yourself if it will work for you. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Replace a para tag throughout book?
On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:43:07 -0800 (PST), meg miranda wrote: >If you have access to WebWorks 2003, UNIX, and perl, I can >help with more details on efficiently doing this sort of >change for a doc set. Yes, this is a good approach. But you don't need WebWorks to get MIF for all the files in your book, including the .book file itself. You can do it with the *demo* version of Mif2Go, no need to purchase. Just set up a project with MIF as the output format. For MIF, the demo and registered versions are entirely identical. One nice feature of Mif2Go's method is that you can save the files as MIF in a different directory, but keep the extensions of the Frame binary files, .fm and .book. In addition, this does *not* alter the relative paths. Why? Because that way when your script is done, you can just drop the altered MIF files back into the original dir, and they Just Work. (We did this originally to allow use of CVS to store MIF files, so diff would work on them, and provide for easy restore.) This saves you the extra step of resaving them as Frame binary at the end; as soon as you edit one, Frame will save it in binary automatically. The free unlimited demo version of Mif2Go is available at: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm You might want to wait until tomorrow; we're putting a new upgrade (53) on the site later tonight. ;-) HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
converting email addresses to hyperlink
On Thu, 1 Jan 2009 10:27:57 +0200, "Avraham Makeler" wrote: >I have an email address in the document, e.g., name at company.com > >How do I convert that email address to a hyperlink so that when the user >clicks it his default email client opens? > >I guess it is "insert hypertext", but wwhere do I go fromn there? You want a hypertext marker with: message URL mailto:name at company.com HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
FrameMaker/ePublisher issue
On Mon, 5 Jan 2009 13:50:50 -0800, Mary Anthony wrote: >This is an ePublisher issue. I have run into it. You can search >characters on the ePublisher support page: > >"Wingdings characters present a particular challenge when working >with HTML-based content. Since Wingdings (as well as a few other >"symbol" fonts) conflicts with the Unicode character map, many >browsers simply don't support it. Internet Explorer skirts the >issue and displays these characters correctly." Yes, there is a browser issue here, but it is tractable. Mif2Go handles it automatically for almost all Wingdings and Symbol chars, and provides a simple way to map any others. From the User's Guide: ~~~ 20.5.6 Mapping characters in a special font Characters in special fonts such as Wingdings or Webdings might not be rendered correctly by non-Microsoft browsers; see ?20.6.5, "Accommodating browser font-rendering differences." However, you can direct Mif2Go to replace a character in any font with its Unicode equivalent, or with an image, or with any HTML code, by providing a macro section for that font in your configuration file. The following Web site suggests mappings from Symbol and Wingdings characters to the closest Unicode code points: http://www.alanwood.net With the kind permission of Alan Wood, we have incorporated these mappings as defaults for all Mif2Go HTML conversions. The defaults should handle all Symbol characters (except for one, the radical extender) and the majority of Wingdings characters. You can override the defaults, or set mappings for any characters that have no equivalent Unicode representation. ~~ We suggest that other vendors may want to do the same; Alan Wood's mappings are free for the asking, and the programming task is simple. WRT the OP's question, the Alan Wood site has mappings for your Wingdings, but not for your Monotype Sorts. You can, however, scan through the Unicode tables Wood references to find Unicode equivalents, which *all* browsers should support. HTH! HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Opinions on FrameMaker Content Management Systems
On Wed, 7 Jan 2009 17:47:49 -0500, "Randall C. Reed" wrote: >I am curious to see if there is any consensus from Framers as to the >preferred Component Content Management system or Source Control system >for a small-to-medium publications department in a small-to-medium >company running FrameMaker 7.2 on a shared network in an IT environment >that is SQL-centric. Should we be thinking "little ball" (Visual Source >Safe) or "big ball" (enterprise content management)? Any opinions >welcome. We'd suggest "free ball", CVS or Subversion. These are not CMS systems, just SCCS, but they do fine for most uses. You are probably better off checking in binaries (perhaps zipped), then doing any compares in Frame itself rather than using the SCCS compare, which is really not meant for applications like Frame that make little changes everywhere. If you do want to use MIF with the SCCS anyway, we built in support for that in Mif2Go, for ourselves when we tried it. It works fine in the free demo version, no license needed: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm Basically, it saves the MIF is such a way that you can use it directly in your regular Frame directories if you ever need to restore it, something not possible with Frame's native SaveAs. But we dropped the idea after a few months, because of excessive archive storage demands (especially for generated files like the IX, with thousands of changes for every revision) and went to storing the binaries in CVS instead. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Does FM crash on Large files on a regular basis?
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 11:26:39 +0200, Orly Zimmerman wrote: >I have an FM file that is 14 MB with lots of Visio embedded >drawings in different conditionalized rows of the tables. ... >Now, each time I do a compare, FM crashes on me. The corrupted >file (with the .fm.c57 extension) shows that all the figs are >corrupted. > >Does anyone have a solution for this? Could it be a simple >matter of adding more memory to the computer? This is the totally predictable result of *embedding* graphics in Frame. Don't do it! Always, always, always include all graphics by reference. The only fix (short of reverting to an earlier version where graphics still work) is to re-import the corrupted graphics, this time by reference. If you want to fix this before it becomes a disaster, you can use the demo version of Mif2Go to export all graphics in their original format, losslessly. You do not have to buy Mif2Go to do this, just install the demo: http://www.omsys.com/dcl/download.htm The User's Guide has detailed instructions in par. 2.5.2, "Replacing embedded graphics with referenced graphics". HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Does FM crash on Large files on a regular basis?
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 13:24:48 -0700, "Combs, Richard" wrote: >Actually, it's much worse than that. "Visio embedded drawings" are _not_ >embedded graphics (in the FM sense) -- FM doesn't have an import filter >for Visio files. They're actually embedded OLE objects. Much more of a >problem than embedding graphics files -- there's lots of overhead >involved with OLE and more chance for things to break. > ... >I suspect OLE objects are beyond even Mif2Go's prodigious capabilities. Nope. ;-) At least, not when they represent Visio files. One of our customers (Intel) actually discovered this, and told us about it. It turns out that if you export the OLE objects with Mif2Go, and rename the files from .ole to .vsd, you can open them in Visio just fine. Use this setting in mif2htm.ini: [GraphExport] ExportOleFiles=Yes That will make the *.ole files in the output directory. You need to rename them, perhaps with a console command: C:\>ren *.ole *.vsd If you were actually using them in Mif2Go outputs, you'd rename them with a BookFileCommand, and also set: [GraphSuffix] ole=vsd so that the HTML Mif2Go produced referenced them correctly. When the OLE objects do *not* represent Visio files, you don't use ExportOleFiles=Yes. Then Mif2Go goes through the OLE objects and hunts down a likely WMF, and exports *that*. Sometimes if there are multiple WMFs it will choose the wrong one, in which case you can set: [GraphExport] MultipleOLE=Yes and we'll output *all* of them. This is in the User's Guide par. 29.2.3.7, "Setting export options for OLE objects". HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
MIF2Go: specifying anchor names
On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:46:51 -0800, "Rick Quatro" wrote: >Now my client has thrown me what I hope is a little curve: they want more >descriptive anchor names; for example, > >access >The granting or withholding of a service or access >to a resource to a requestor based... As Michael said, this is a Very Bad Idea. The name duplications *will*, not "may", bite you with links that work but go to the wrong place. And nobody but you will ever see the anchors anyway. Dumb. >I will have to use gotolink and newlink markers to accomplish this. Since I >am inserting markers with FrameScript, this shouldn't be a problem. > >My basic question is this: Can I get this output using MIF2Go using gotolink >and newlink markers? > >access >The granting or withholding of a service or access >to a resource to a requestor based... Sure, that's what you'll get by default. But try to talk the fo//person out of it; at least, make clear that your ongoing repair time will be billed at full rate, not provided as a free "bug fix". ;-) -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Alignment of graphic and text elements in a table format
On Sat, 10 Jan 2009 09:51:50 +0200, "Shell, Robert" wrote: >However, the anchored frame in col. 2 of the table inserts an extra line >above itself while the embedded text in column one does not. My clunky >workaround is to insert a carriage return or above the text which >lines up the graphic and text OK, but the result is far too much space above >the resulting output, i.e. page AND table. I have tried adjusting the "above >PGF", but this does not seem to be respected in FM table format. "Cell >margins" does not seem to work either since they apply to the whole table. >Is there a baseline solution here? Sounds like the anchored frame is set for "Below current line". Try changing it to "At insertion point" instead. The anchor para, which is the "extra line", will then be behind it instead of above it. Then you can further tweak the frame's vertical position with "Distance above baseline", which can be negative. HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Saving Frame files as HTML - with graphics as jpg
On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 09:42:24 -0600, "ROBIN POTTS" wrote: > The limit to the graphics seems to be the problem, not so much the >image type. Actually, it's that Frame converts the EPS *preview* image, usually a very low-resolution TIFF, rather than the real EPS graphic (PostScript). The EPS preview is meant only for identification of the graphic, not for actual use... >I'm going to look at converting multiple images from .eps to >..jpg or .gif but in a large file size. That will work. You could use GhostScript, which is a free PostScript interpreter: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/ with the free converter ImageMagick: http://www.imagemagick.org/ Or you could use a commercial converter, such as ps2bitmap from Square One: http://www.square1.nl/index.htm >We just need something quick and >easy for our documents to be searchable. Normally we produce everything >in pdf but this isn't easily searchable on the web for content. But the >images do need to be a little better. I can replace the graphics in the >HTML folders and it looks great. One thing to watch out for is that Frame's native HTML conversion names the graphics by chapter file name and sequence number. So if you add or delete a graphic, many of those numbers will change. This can be a nasty surprise at deadline... and we don't know any way to work around it. If you were to use our product, Mif2Go, to produce the HTML, you'd still need to convert the EPS graphics separately to get decent resolution. However, we name graphics by their Frame ObjectIDs, which do not change unless you *copy* and paste the graphic into another location (*cut* and paste keeps the same ID). So you would avoid surprises. ;-) HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
MS Manual of Style -- this month's guest at the Hmmm... corner
On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 09:56:18 -0800, "Gillian Flato" wrote: >Actually, I know that the Microsoft Tech Writers >use Frame and not Word. And many have a site license for Mif2Go, too... ;-) Not our biggest customer (that's Lucent), but in the top five... -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
Tool for XML -> Online Help
On Tue, 2 May 2006 16:46:31 -0700, "Angela Akridge" wrote: >I've never worked with setting up an Online Help system. I know how to write >in raw html/sgml, but that's about the extent of my experience with Online >Help. I'm familiar with single-source authoring (using Epic) to create >customized documentation, but have NO experience designing a help system I >currently edit existing context-sensitive online help. I don't use an Online >Help application (JavaHelp or RoboHelp). I simply have some hooks in the >code that call some html files (nothing sophisticated). > >I'd like to use the content that I produce in manuals to produce online help >topics. If this means that the Online Help can no longer be context >sensitive without a lot of infrastrucuture, then so be it (although a hybird >would be ideal). My company is okay with dumping the manual into a clean >collection of individual procedures (modules) if the design provides a >search box. What tool will take my Frame xml output and generate a pretty >look-and-feel for online help? I like MS Word's Online Help. First, there's another list that's devoted to Help, that you may want to join and ask on. The Welcome message gives you a set of questions to answer about your needs that you can use to make up a good query: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HATT/ One of the regulars there has developed a grid of Help tool comparison information: http://www.helpstuff.com That said, for single-sourcing from Frame, there are really two choices: Mif2Go (our product), and WebWorks Pro. Both have free eval versions, and you may want to try both: http://www.omsys.com/ http://www.quadralay.com/ HTH! -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. http://www.omsys.com/
