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Hello FM community,
I'm relatively new to FrameMaker and I'm hoping you might be able to help me out with an margin issue I've been experiencing lately, probably the last two weeks or so.
I have the TCS 3.5 which includes Frame 10 and Acrobat X Pro.
I use FM to produce my company's user manual. I use a couple of master pages for different types of pages, like section pages and title pages, but the majority of my manual uses the same master page which is just a simple header, footer, and giant text frame in the middle.
Up until recently (about 2 weeks), everything generated fine when I went to save as PDF.
Recently, however, whenever I save as PDF, Acrobat distiller and/or FrameMaker is not respecting my right margins and will generate OFF the page. The text displays perfectly in FM, but when I generate as PDF, random pages print outside of the right margin.
Has anybody experienced this before? Forgive me if this has come up many times, but it is new to me, and I would appreciate any newbie tips on how to troubleshoot this issue.
This is how it looks in FrameMaker:
This is how it generates as PDF:
Thanks so much!
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That does look rather strange. A few more details would help.
What jobtions did you specify?
What was the output sheet size specified?
Are you generating for CMYK or RGB?
What is your FrameMaker point version, i.e. have you patched FM10 to the latest version?
Are you geting any font substitutions - looks different between the FM & PDF outputs?
Do you have the "DisplayUsingPrinterMetrics=On" option set in the FM maker.ini file?
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Version 10.0.2.419
I'm printing High Quality for 8.5 x 11" letter paper.
Here is a screenshot:
I am generating for CMYK.
Sometimes I get the 'Times New Roman' font not found, but I am not using that anywhere in my doc as far as I know. My font family is Open Sans.
As for your last question, you totally lost me there. How do I locate the make.ini file and turn this setting ON? [Edit: I googled and found it in the exe file. Yes, that setting is turned=On.]
Thank you so much.
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Comparing the PDF with the FM, one sees that the lines break at the same places. This suggests to me that Acrobat Reader or Acrobat is using a different font to display the text. This would be strange UNLESS the font FrameMaker is using is located somewhere that only FrameMaker has access. So, Acrobat is using a different font to display the text.
Check the PDF log to see whether Distiller is replacing the font with another one. I recall someone recently saying that one needs to tell Distiller to use only system fonts and not document fonts (if they are embedded in the document).
Also try setting the PDF options in FrameMaker to embed the fonts in the PDF. Then check the PDF to see whether the correct fonts were embedded (open the file and select File > Properties > Fonts).
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I have not changed any of my master fonts ever and never had this problem until recently which is why things are so strange. I've been using the same fonts for a year and they always generated fine in PDF.
Here is a shot of my Distiller log. I'm assuming this is what you meant by PDF log?
And I checked the file properties of the generated PDF and the Open Sans fonts are there:
I'm stumped!!!
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What is the default printer that you have during a FM session? It should be the Adobe PDF printer instance.
The PDF properties listing of what's emebedded doesn't tell you what's actually being used at any specific location in your document. To check what font is actually being used, you can use Acrobat's "Edit Document Text" option to see which font is there. Select the option. Highlight the text and right click to get the context menu. Select "Properties" and you should get the TouchUp Properties panel with the Text tab showing the font specifics.
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My default printer is Adobe PDF.
I don't doubt that there is a font substitution taking place, I just can't figure out why this happening.
I did as you suggested and looked into the "Edit Document Text" and here is what I found. Both say OpenSans as the original font, but the weird pages have added 0.34 Word Spacing which is causing the text to generate off the page.
Thanks for all your suggestions guys!!!
Maybe I should just change my font family to Times New Roman and this will solve the problem??? (kidding, kidding)
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Is this happening randomly throughout your documentation or in any specific files?
Check your FM paragraph designer to see if there are any overrides being applied in the paragraph tags that show the enhanced word spacings. Also, what's the original source of the content, i.e. was it entered in FM or was it imported from another app like Word? Sometimes oddball formatting comes aong as baggage that FM doesn't properly clean out. A MifWash (saving as MIF, re-open and save as binary) will often clear out any leftover cruft.
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I think we're getting closer.
I figured out the pattern of misbehaviour. Every time I applied a BOLD character format over-ride on my 'Body' Paragraph Tag, the Distiller would generate 'bold-like' spacing/spreading for the entire line. Am I doing something wrong with bolding certain words? Please see photo below.
[Edited to add: FM is the original source of the document.]
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How precisely was the "bolding" applied? It's hard to tell from just looking at the posted image - and are these from FM or the PDF?
You should have a "Bold" (actually you should be using a more semantically appropriate name for the character tag to represent meaning not formatting attribute) in your Character table. What parameters are set in the Character Designer for this tag?
If you are using the "B" bold button or ctrl-B shortcut, then STOP! You should never ever, never ever, never ever apply a character formatting in FM unless it is using a Character tag from the catalog. If you use these shortcus, then the document publishing pixies will bless you with frustration and endless hair-pulling on you and your document for evermore...
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I am guilty as charged Arnis for the control B-ing. Is my document cursed forever?
I would say half of my bolding is manual when I was first starting to use FM and didn't know anything about character tags, and then the other half was done through a Character tag in the catalog where all settings are 'As is' except for the Weight = Bold.
I did go through several files with the manual bolding, removed all paragraph format overrides and applied the character tag to individual words and phrases.
I then printed that single page as a PDF and the problem with the spacing and/or font replacement is unchanged.
Maybe it's best to just start from scratch, all 190 pages.
I appreciated all of your suggestions. I still have so much to learn about best practices (and never ever practices).
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Look at the File > Utilities > Create and Apply Formats prior to full-on weeping.
Make sure to set your character catalog to view only used formats; you may decide not to step off of the ledge!
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Just do a complete backup before you apply formats - it's a one-way street.
Also, do try a MifWash first to see if this cleans out the spurious spacing from the bolding.
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Thank you all for your suggestions. I tried to Create and Apply Formats as well as do the MifWash and none of this worked unfortunately.
I ended up changing my master font to Myriad Pro and applying the new style template to my entire book and all of the spacing and bolding issues disappeared.
Whether my margin and spacing issues were related to Open Type fonts that I had to download, my installation of them, or something I did in FM along way, I'm not sure, but I'm relieved that the PDF is now respecting all my rules.
Thanks again for the help.
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This totally off the wall, but you say that maybe your issues relate to Open Type fonts. There should be no problems with Open Type fonts.
In this post and earlier, you mention your master font. Adobe used to make a customizable font type called Multiple Masters. I am wondering whether you are confusing the two, multiple masters and open type.
I do not know whether FrameMaker does or ever did support multiple master fonts.
Just a hunch.
Van
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FYI, FM did/does support MM fonts, though they have been deprecated by Adobe.
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It also looks to me like there is font substitution taking place. Look
at the differences in size of the spaces between the words. Look at the
word "If" in the middle of the 2nd list item. Perhaps this is just an
artifact of the graphic you captured, but in one, the "I" and "f" are
the same height. In the other, they are not.