What happened to Find/Change Special Characters

[Chris Hembel]

I am a recent update from FrameMaker 9 to FrameMaker 11. I use many notations with non-breaking hyphens and non-breaking spaces. In version 9 I was able to use the hex codes in the Find/Change dialog box and find and replace those notations. Now in version 11, it does not find those characters. I end up finding more than I want.

For Example: I want to find

(E-Vote Sept. 12, 2008)

This text has a non-breaking hyphen and the spaces shown are non-breaking also. When I entered these characters into the document, I used "Esc hyphen h" key sequence for the hyphen and "Control+space" for the spaces.

When I enter "(E\x15Vote\x10Sept.\x1012,\x102008)" and press the Find button, FrameMaker converts the text to "(E\+Vote\s#Sept.\s#12,\s#2008)" and returns with a statement "Not Found." I get the same error if I copy the text and paste it into the Find/Change Dialog box. I have tried this with the "Consider Case," "Use Wildcards" and the "Whole Word" checks both off and on. I can't get it to find it.

Honestly, I never noticed if verstion 9 did the conversion, from \x15 to \+ and \x10 to \s#, in the Find/Change dialog box because it always found what I was looking for.

I hope someone can tell me how to fix this because this is a function that I use all the time in FrameMaker. I use non-breaking hyphens and spaces all over my documents.

I have also reported this as a bug because that is what if feels like to me. I did go out and updated my installation of FrameMaker, thinking that this may have been reported and fixed already.

One Sad FrameMaker User

Chris

[bowen192 · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure this is what you're looking for, but you could;

Copy your 'E-Vote Sept. 12, 2008' text

Go to Find/Change

Select Text & Character Formats on Clipboard from the dropdown menu

Click Find.

[Chris Hembel]

bowen192,

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much. I still want to know why I could use the dialog box codes in the Find/Change dialog box. I have been doing that for years with no problem Your solution does work though so I can use it as a work around.

thanks so much!!!

[Arnis_Gubins]

FM is just trying to substitute in the appropriate dialog box codes for the display and find.

The codes can be found here: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/framemaker/using/WSd817046a44e105e21e63e3d11ab7f7862b-7fd5.html

The non-breaking hyphen is "\+" and a non-breaking space is "\ ".  You can also use the unicode values (\unnnn) to find these. A non-breaking space is 00A0 and the non-breaking hyphen is 2011.

[Chris Hembel]

Arnis,

I have The special character codes. I have been using them for years. I find that I can use the \+ to find the non-breaking hyphen, but I can't figure out how to find the non-breaking space. I am working with the FrameMaker Engineering Team to see if they can re-create my error. I can't figure out what I am doing wrong. As I said earlier, I have been doing this for a lot of years.

I love FrameMaker and I think it is the best software for handling large documentation. I am so bummed that this is giving me problems.

thanks for trying anyway.

Chris

[Arnis_Gubins]

Chris,

As I stated in my reply, to find a non-breaking space, use "\ " [that's a backslash and space] to find a non-breaking space.

[Chris Hembel]

Arnis,

Yes I did try that but I have not been able to get that to work for me. The engineers at Adobe are having the same problem with it. I can find all of the characters if I do the copy and then change the Find/Chane to "Text & Character Formats on Clipboard" so I can use that workaround for now.

I do so love this software when I am working on large documents.

[Arnis_Gubins]

Chris,

That's odd. It (dialog-box codes) works for me on my systems:

Using the dialog-box codes works perfectly. The unicode values for the non-breaking space (nbsp = \u00A0) and non-breaking hyphen (\u2011), however, aren't working. It looks like the wrong glyph is being substituted in both cases.

This is definiely a bug when doing a unicode-value search.

[Arnis_Gubins]

Chris,

I just noticed that you were using \x10 for the non-breaking space. That's actually the numeric space (\s# in the dialog-box codes). The non-breaking space in FM is \x11. See: http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/framemaker/Character_Sets.pdf on p.3 for the proper hexcodes.

Otherwise, as I mentioned in the previous reply, if I continue to use the dialogue box codes, I don't have any issues in FM11 finding the special symbols. Using the unicode values is a bit dodgy though.

[Chris Hembel]

OMG,

You are absolutely correct. And I have the Character Sets document printed out and in front of me. Talk about not seeing the trees for the forest.

Thank you so much for seeing that.

I will always love FrameMaker and I have always found the answers I need on this Forum. I appreciate the fact that you stuck with this until you figured out what I was doing wrong.

Chris