FM10: Saving documents in FM9 format

[Andreas_Eisenhart]

Is it possible to instruct FrameMaker 10 to save FrameMaker 9 files as FM 9 files by default, as long as I have not explicitly selected the new FM10 format? There's a mixed environment in our company, and its very cumbersome for FM10 users to always do a "Save-As-FM9" for each and any document in order to keep these documents compatible for FM9 users...

[Bob_Niland]

Is it possible to instruct FrameMaker 10 to save FrameMaker 9 files as FM 9 files by default, ...

If it turns out that the answer is "no", some possible workarounds might include:

• setting up a macro to use instead of File > Save{As}
• setting up a script to do that if a macro can't
  
• setting up a macro to run the script if needed to make it easier
  

These would require that the users run the macro/script rather than used File > Save. This might be as trivial as hitting key F9. I don't know if you could hide/block access to File>Save.

An alternative to saving in FM9 format might be to routinely save as FM10 MIF. The file name suffixes can remain .book and .fm, even though the content is MIF. FM9 should be able to open them, whether or not they contain FM10 features (I would expect FM9 to dialog about, but ignore any FM10 features).
______

I have limited FM9 experience, and zero FM10 experience.

[Wiedenmaier]

Hi,

I'm not sure if there is a config setting to change the behaviour of that command, but I don't think so.

But FM10 supports ExtendScript. So you can create your own "Save as FM9" menu (or hook into the existing one), with a small script

Hope this helps

Markus

[Andreas_Eisenhart]

Well, that might work - if I only knew how to do it (or at least had the time to learn...)

[Andreas_Eisenhart]

FM09 can indeed open FM10 MIF files (no dialog involved), but (of course?) silently strips off all FM10 features on resave.

Alas, I have absolutely no knowlegde about scripting or macros in FM,

[Wiedenmaier]

Hi Andreas,

try following small script (on your own risk).

Copy this code to a txt-File and Save it in $FMHome\startup with jsx extension (i.e. SaveAsFM9.jsx). If you restart FM10, you will find a Menu "Save as FM9" at the end of the file menu.

If you click this menu you will find, this script saves the active document with a new FileName in the same directory. [filename].FM9.fm

Hope this helps

Markus

#target framemaker;
    
var fileMenu = app.GetNamedMenu ("FileMenu");
var saveFM9Cmd = app.GetNamedCommand("FM_CMD_SAVEFM9") ;
if (saveFM9Cmd.ObjectValid()==false) 
    saveFM9Cmd = fileMenu.DefineAndAddCommand (99999, "FM_CMD_SAVEFM9", "Save as FM9...", "");
function Command(command)
{
    if (command!=99999)
        return ;
    if (app.ActiveDoc.ObjectValid()==false)
        return ;
    var props = GetSaveDefaultParams();
    var i = GetPropIndex (props, Constants.FS_FileType);
    props.propVal.ival  = Constants.FV_SaveFmtBinary90;
    var i = GetPropIndex (props, Constants.FS_SaveMode);
    props.propVal.ival  = Constants.FV_ModeSaveAs;  
    var fileName = app.ActiveDoc.Name + ".FM9.fm";
    var saveReturnParams  = new PropVals();
    app.ActiveDoc.Save (fileName, props, saveReturnParams) ;
    alert("Document saved in FM9 format\n" + fileName) ;
}

[Andreas_Eisenhart]

You made my day ... that script works great and does all I need (at least for the moment...) Thank you!

[Bob_Niland]

FM09 can indeed open FM10 MIF files (no dialog involved), but (of course?) silently strips off all FM10 features on resave.

Is that a problem?

Since FM9 doesn't know what those tags are, it may not know how to encode them in the binary .fm structures. Even if it could preserve them during edit, it wouldn't know how to write them back out to binary .fm at all. It couldn't even be sure how to write them back out to .mif if nearby content was modified. So silent stripping is entirely unsurprising.

If you aren't relying on any FM10 features, this should be satisfactory. Otherwise, you need to bump the FM9 users to FM10.

[Andreas_Eisenhart]

No problem, not even surprising -  just the result of a short trial ...

[Guest]

Do you know of anyone who offers a downsaving service?

I am a typesetter. I have a client (translation agency) who translates Fm files for a multinational.

They translated 1000s pages set up in FM 7 which I tidy up in FM 7.

A small regional office now uses FM 11. They only need very few pages translating and refuse to downsave their files. Thetranslator cannot argue or risks loosing the 1000s pages in FM 7.

I can't justify butin a license for FM 11 (£1000) in order to just downsave the files myself, (Trados translation software needs FM7 mifs).

I only need 10 or 15 files downsaving per month, so would pay per file...

Thanks

[Arnis_Gubins]

Nick,

If the client asks to have the files deilvered in MIF format, then these can be opened with any version of FM. The only caveat is that newer features aren't recognized in the older versions, so they are simply dropped. This may or may not be an issue.

One other issue though, that may be of significance in your case, is that FM8 & up use unicode for character encoding, while FM7 and earlier use the FrameRoman encoding. So depending upon the fonts used and whether or not codepage mapping is being used, there may be some phunnies happening going from FM11 to FM7 and back.