Good list, Mike:

3. Would "click through" stacked objects work for you in place of true layers and management?

5. There's a section number variable now; would that suffice?

10. Also autonumbering that sorts in generated indexes as true numeric, rather than alphanumeric, so 9, 10, would sort as 9, 10, not 10, 9.

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

Mike Wickham wrote:

 

1. (H-very high!) Direct epub conversion. I was really disappointed

that the epub capability of FM10 required RoboHelp. I read that Adobe

made this choice because epub is for display on screen and RoboHelp is

for developing content for viewing on screen, while FrameMaker is for

producing print. But epub is also a BOOK format! Those of us who create

books for print are finding more and more need to make e-books. I have

no need for the other features in RoboHelp.

 

2. (H) *Ability to set program-wide default preferences for anchored

frames and runaround.* Bruce Foster's ImpGraph plugin used to do this,

but he passed away and no FM 10 version was ever created. I work with a

lot of graphics and I miss this time-saver.

 

3. (H) Layers panel. It would be nice to have a way to see the

stacking order of frames and graphics, similar to Photoshop/Illustrator.

The various send-to-front or send-to-back options are clumsy to use and

make it very difficult to select a particular object in a stack. This

would also help in those times when objects are accidentally duplicated

and placed on top of each other.

 

4. (H) Format list report. This report would list all paragraph and

character format properties in a single table format. It would make it

easy to scan down a table column to find paragraph (or character)

formats that are, for example, using an incorrect font family or

language setting. It would make it easy to see which character formats

were set to a particular font, rather than "As Is," and so forth.

 

5. (H) "Part" numbering. We have volume, chapter, section, and page

numbering, but part numbering is still missing. A "part" is a group of

chapters. So it would fall between volume and chapter numbering. This

division is common in books.

 

6. (H) Improved typography.Optical margin alignment, like in InDesign,

would be especially nice.

 

7. (H) Expanded properties in File Info. One can place custom

properties in a PDF, under the Document Properties> Custom field tab. I

would like to be able to do that from File Info in FrameMaker. New

fields could include ISBN, Publisher, Publisher Address, Email Address,

etc. User-created fields would be even better.

 

8. (H) Copyright metadata. While there is a "Copyright Status" field

in File Info, it does not populate the "Copyright Status" field in the

"Additional Metadata" section of the PDF. Nor does it populate the

"Copyright Notice" or "Copyright Info URL" fields there. It would be

nice to place this info in File Info and have it flow through to those

fields. Perhaps all metadata should be settable from FrameMaker.

 

9. (M) Ability tocenter text vertically on a page without putting it

in a table cell.

 

10. (M) Autonumbering model based on ASCII or Unicode code. There is

already autonumbering capability for numerals, alphabets, and roman

numerals. The new type of autonumber would be useful for those fonts

that have circled-number glyphs in them. I would like to be able to

specify the first ASCII character or first Unicode character that

represents the circled-one glyph, and have autonumbering find the rest

by incrementing the ASCII code or Unicode value.

 

So, for example, it might work this way: With the Wingdings font, I

could specify \xc0 for the circled number 1, and FM would recognize that

\xc1 would be the next autonumber in the sequence for a circled number

2. Or in ZapfDingbats, u+00c0 would start the autonumbering sequence

with a circled number 1 and FM would know that u+00c1 would increment it

by one.

 

Mike Wickham

info@mikewickham.com

Mike Wickham wrote:

 

3. If I understand what you mean, "click through" would at least be an

improvement. I messed with InDesign a while back, and I think

Ctrl+click, or something like that, let you bore down through layers. A

full layers panel would be even better, though.

 

5. If I recall correctly, the section numbering in FM only works as a

subset of a chapter. In other words, chapters can hold multiple

sections, but sections can't hold multiple chapters.

Yes, click through is exactly that. IIRC, before layers came to many of the applications that have them now, clicking through stacked object was how it worked. I asked, just in case it's easier to develop a click through method than a full layer ability. In fact, it's probably possible to create a click-down/up-one object ExtendScript and get it into the keystroke and menu systems; IOW a short-term fixup, not unlike other FM fixups.

I'm not in FrameMaker at the moment, but I believe the "unit" variables have some swapability, so if you're not using the highest-level book name variable, it could be a chapter variable, and chapter could be a section. Also, except for the effort of manually creating or re-creating a multiple-counter scheme, FM's cross-book-file paragraph autonumbering can manage many levels of hierarchical nested stuff.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

How about documenting and providing samples for existing features that are more or less unusable due to sketchy or nonexisting documentation or inadquate, outdated, or incomprehensible samples? I'm thinking in particular about ExtendScript and DocBook / DITA XML.

I'd also like a command-line option for specifying an ExtendScript when launching FrameMaker.

Hello Kapil. We also appreciate the opportunity to make the following recommendations:

1. PLEASE fix the “not responding error” when updating a larger book or generating a PDF in FM 9 and 10. This was not an issue in V8 or lower. It can take almost 10 minutes to update/print to pdf.
2. Fix the issue with missing font errors and the FM console window opening every time FM is opened.
3. Make tables more user friendly (i.e. easier conversion from text to tables or copying text from a different program into a table).
4. Fix the issue of needing to refocus FM or close and reopen in order to access and select para tags in the status bar at the bottom of the program. Also,  when selecting a para tag, allow the user to continue clicking on the first letter of the para tag, rather than having to use the arrow keys.
5. Simplify the process of creating variables or come up with an easier method altogether.
6. Streamline revisions. Hate to say it but Microsoft Word has it figured out.
7. Simplify the process of upgrading. When using Save All to update all files in a book, do not prompt for each file to convert to a newer version.
8. Make the graphics toolbar more intuitive, similar to Microsoft Word and Publisher. Also, once a graphic/text box is selected, simply use the arrow keys to move an object, rather than Alt+arrow.
9. Reduce the size of the document browsing tabs, only displaying a portion of the document title when several are open. Currently, they flow off the screen.
10. Retain the last few search items in a drop down list in Find/Change.

Thanks,

Lynette Schwend

Computers Unlimited

Hi Kapil,

Here is the feedback from our team.

1. If you open a chapter file contains cross-reference links and then close it without making any changes, FrameMaker asks if you want to save changes before closing. Since we often multitask with multiple files, this leads to "did I change something?" paranoia when opening a file to check something, getting distracted by other things, then coming back to close it. It would be nice if FrameMaker truly understood whether changes were made to the document or not.

2. I share the frustration of others about the focus behavior when you (attempt to) activate the Find pane with ctrl-F. I expect ctrl-F to place the cursor in the find text box, but instead it highlights whatever the last-used widget was in that window. I've actually made document mistakes that have gone to production because I hit ctrl-F and typed some text and hit return, and what actually happened is that it activated "Find next", then (undetected by me) deleted the newly found and selected text because of my keystrokes.

3. We would like to see spelling and grammar checking highlighted on the screen, as is provided by Microsoft Word. (We are using FM 9, not sure if this is already present in FM 10.) We do have a peer review process set up, but sometimes misspellings slip through.

4. For some of us, FrameMaker crashes often, with no discernable reason. We feel helpless as to how we can take action to improve the stability of FrameMaker, both with crashes as well as unexpected behaviors or bugs. It would be nice to have a customer-friendly way to file bugs that don't go into the proverbial bit bucket. Or, perhaps it already exists and we don't know of it?

I had previously sent this feedback via an email response, but it never got posted to this forum. I am re-replying through a direct forum post.

Thanks!

I've had one simple desire for almost a decade:

Frame Right/Further Pgf and Frame Left/Closer Pgf

Overview

Currently in Unstructured FM, one can specify a Frame Above Pgf and Below Pgf for a pgf style, calling a Reference Page graphic frame. I would like a Frame Right/Further (from margin) and Left/Closer (to margin) option as well, for placing, e.g., a warning icon to the left of a "Warning" pgf tag, or placing an attention graphic on the outside margin of a "Tips" pgf tag.

Issues Addressed

Currently, one must manually place every such graphic or do something funky with autonumbering and a ding font, which obviously limits what one can do with color, size, and positioning. There is no way to stylistically control (in Unstructured FM) graphic placement to the left/closer-to-margins or right/further-from-margins.

I also suspect that there would have to be an additional setting for the graphic's vertical alignment relative to the pgf (e.g., top-to-top of pgf, bottom-to-bottom of pgf, centered, etc.); but at least the spacing from the pgf is already easily controlled with the graphic frame's sizing, so no additional settings would be required to adjust the gap between the pgf and the graphic.

*******

Wouldn't you know it, I just thought of another one.

12. (M) I'd like to be able to change the default marker color. More than once, I have deleted text and accidentally deleted an unnoticed marker in it. If the marker color was different than the text, it would stand out more and help prevent this error.

IDON\'THAVEONE!!!!!!!! wrote:

 

Please, please, please 1) DO NOT ADD ANY NEW FEATURES UNTIL YOU HAVE REMOVED AND PATCHED ALL OF THE BUGS THAT CURRENTLY EXITS!!!! 2) Write useable and useful user documentation. What you have now is not intuitive, not informative, and lacking in meaningful procedural steps. It contains a lot of "what you can do with Framemaker" but hardly any concentrated useful instruction sets for how to do anything.  I still refer to to my old hard copy Framemaker 7 user guide because it is well written and useful.

 

Framemaker, as well as Adober products and documentation in general, used to be top-of-the-line. No more. I've been a user since before Framemaker was purchased by Adobe, and a Robohelp user since the mid-1990s. The quality, predictability, and useability of both of these products has deteriotated in the past few years. I am very disappointed in Adobe.

 

Please take the time to make the necessary repairs from the groiund up; then feel free to add new features after the product has returned to the high-quality I need to get my work done.

I'm really ambivalent about responding to an anonymous poster. Maybe that's just me.

I'm also ambivalent about the points in the post. I'm for improving and evolving FM, and I'm against neglecting cleaning up old unfinished work.

FrameMaker's got a tough position to fill - keeping up with the tumultuous expansion of new communications media technologies, while developing and enhancing the beloved "Good Old FM" that's informed how so many professionals have worked productively for so many years.

The point about not neglecting making the "necessary repairs from the ground up." IMO it's as simple the classic economic dilemma of making "guns or butter." Economies need both guns and butter, so the problem is how to split production resources for the greatest good. In democracies, there's always contention among more-or-less equally-empowered interests, which usually resolves into a balanced compromise acceptable to most of the players.

However, FrameMaker exists in an undemocratic environment. While user requests are often, democratically, incorporated into product development, how the development resources are apportioned among old-stuff improvements, and developing new stuff to survive by meeting and exceeding competitors' challenges. Without survival, there's no company or product to produce and improve, and no audience to serve.

The long-standing bugs and shortcomings, that are so often requested to be fixed, and that seem to be consistently ignored, even if they are seen by those who allocate resources to be irritating inconveniences, rather than major bugs, are nevertheless serious issues to users. It's true that FM's been making huge steps in the areas of new media technologies, most competitive tools that have those technologies aren't complete replacements for FrameMaker. Yet. As more FrameMaker users find workable competitive tools, they'll move over, and as the competitors continue developing FM-replacement features, more FM users will migrate.

The question is "will suffieint FM development resources be devoted to fixing these old problems?" And, the follow-up, "Will they get fixed in time for anyone to be left to care?"

Because so many of us FrameMaker users have learned to expect better, it's especially disappointing when we have to learn to expect less.

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

I appreciate the opportunity.

I am a very new user of TCS3.5 and FrameMake 10 in particular. We are moving from an unstructured authoring with Microsoft Office tools to structured authoring with FrameMaker /RoboHelp. We decided on TCS3.5 because we believe the suite will provide overall best set tools to move us in the right direction of structured authoring despite our apprehensive of a steep learning curve from where are coming from. Regardless of our authoring methods, we write a lot of user manuals and I am disappointed with the usability of FrameMaker's user guide. I currently don't have enough experience with FrameMaker to request too many improvements but below is what I would like to see:

1. H = Better user guide with more detailed information and troubeshooting, especially for newer features like SharePoint connector. It seems some of the content of the user guide is written with the assumption that people are already familiar with FrameMaker and, as a result, leave out good information that could be taken for granted in that context that newcomers will be completely at a loss. And before anyone offfer the suggestions, the Adobe TV videos are wonderful but they offer tantalizing views of information that do not clearly or fully answer my questions.

2. H = Better and easier conversion and from unstructured and very popular document editing tools (i.e. Microsoft Office).

3. H = Better workspace to use as an XML editor with DITA and other popular standards validation, without the style template overlay. Using Notepad (or other configured editor) is ok to look at XML code, but I would prefer the fuctionality to be in one tool if possible. In my limited experience, XMetal does a credible job in that type of workspace, and copy and past from Word to XMetal with DITA is much easier than with FrameMaker. This feature may be simply  a user preference but I like my tags on when coding, I even have my show/hide on when I write in Word for a similar reason.

4. H = Maybe I am just missing the instructions, a drag and drop feature for building DITA maps would very useful.

5. M = Direct to EPub would be nice too.

Well, that is all for now. I am sure I will run into more challenges as I learn to use FrameMaker/RoboHelp while converting our legacy documentation and I will post accordingly.

My current system is FrameMaker 8, so forgive me if I suggest something that is already in 10.

1. H - Outline view, with expandable/collapsable/hierarchical outline view of headings only. It should have the ability to move, promote, demote or copy entire sections (including any collapsed/invisible headings/subsections, but not including any expanded/visible subsections) by moving, promoting, demoting, or copying the heading. Outline levels should be linkable to paragraph styles, with the ability to assign more than one paragraph style to the same outline level. Outline view would probably need to show all conditions, for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that Conditional Text markers often get plastered onto the fronts of subsequent headings when you hide a conditional section. As FrameMaker is designed for long documents, I have been continually disappointed and amazed that (for over 20 years now) FrameMaker doesn’t have an outline view. (And before you tell me to try Structured FrameMaker, I’ve tried it. The Structure view isn’t even remotely close to an outliner.) In my opinion an outliner is one of the most useful and powerful authoring tools ever invented, and is the last major critical feature that FrameMaker doesn’t have.

2. H - For conversion of a document and its hotlinks to PDF, add support for the "matrix" and "popup" commands in hypertext markers. These don’t currently make it through to the PDF. The matrix implementation would probably be straightforward. But for the "pop-up" implementation I don’t even know if the current PDF format can handle links in the form of popup menus; perhaps someone can enlighten me. The matrix command is extremely useful for making self-maintaining navigational buttons on master pages, because the matrix hypertext commands come from a text flow on a Reference page, which in turn can come from auto-updated cross-references which echo chapter numbers and such, or from an alternative imported Reference page. When I started to distribute my 60-manual set of books in PDF format (previously distributed in FrameViewer format) I had to replace a set of self-maintaining matrix buttons with hardcoded gotolink buttons that are labour-intensive to maintain. If I could use matrix buttons again (even a simple 1x1 matrix that consists of one cell) it would save a lot of time in my document finishing procedure, and reduce the potential for error.

3. H - Macro recording and playback, integrated with scripting. It has to be dependable. I do my writing in Windows FM8, and my semi-automated document finishing procedure in UNIX FM8 because of its macro and fmbatch scripting capabilities. Now that Windows FM 10 has scripting I have the opportunity to replicate my UNIX scripts on Windows (and be ready for when my UNIX box eventually dies), but I am dreading the migration. After hearing about problems with moving the focus between the document window and pop-ups (and rather crucially back into the document window) on Windows I am fearful that the automation will simply stop or abort at some point. On UNIX I can type a single command (which in turn launches a series of unattended fmbatch commands) and come back 8 hours later to a collection of 60 large PDF files. I don’t want to replace that command with a two-week interactive waste of time, so the macro and scripting playback on Windows will have to be rock solid, like it is on UNIX.

4. M - In the File menu, make the list of recently opened files longer. In FM8 it holds 5, when I need about 50. And the filename should be followed by the name of the parent folder. Like many managers of very large manual suites, I use the same standard names for many files (manIX.fm, etc.) in order to standardise my stylesheet’s navigation buttons, and the files reside in different directories. In the File menu listing I can’t tell them apart.

5. M - Fix the "None" cursor blink rate bug. You know, the one that makes FrameMaker freeze at 60 minutes (or the autosave time, whichever is sooner) if you set the cursor blink rate to "None" in the Windows keyboard settings. Putting aside the questionable logic of designing a visible insertion point indicator that is in fact invisible 50% of the time, I work fast, and when my eyes are flitting quickly between three screens and umpteen windows thousands of times a day, half a second is a long time to wait for the cursor to show up just to see where I’ve left it. All the little delays add up to one big annoyance and it slows me down. Making it blink faster just adds to the animation noise that I try to keep to a minimum so I can concentrate on my work. Have you ever tried reading a book while a friend flicks their fingers at your face? Distracting isn’t it? Would it really be so hard to make the cursor just sit still quietly with a solid user-defined colour and thickness so we can still see it without all the hyperactivity?

6. L - Add the ability to interrogate the properties of a highlighted character to see exactly what it is (Unicode slot number and UTF-8 slot number). Many a time I have tried to tell the difference between different characters that look identical (quotes, rings, certain English and Russian characters, etc.), and I end up entering a hex code guess into the Find facility just to see if it can find the character that I’m looking at.

7. L - Add the ability for ordinary international power users to see and use FrameMaker’s existing Asian language features (menu option Format > Document > Combined Fonts). This feature exists - why hide it? Many of us work on global documents nowadays. We shouldn’t have to use a localised operating system or hack the AsianFonts parameter in the $FMHOME/fminit/configui/cmds.cfg file just to get the menu option to show up in the interface. I gave this a Low priority because I already have a workaround - I hacked the cmds.cfg file myself because I needed to produce some Chinese documents on my English system.

8. L - Add a paragraph attribute for right-indenting the Last line of a paragraph independently of the paragraphs’s general right-indent. This could be similar to the "First" line left-indent capability, but would work as a right-indent on the last line. This would be useful for entries in the TOC so that the page number area on the right-hand side doesn’t get cluttered up with the preceding text, for entries that are more than one line long. I gave this a low priority because I can get similar behaviour by using certain insane values for Word Spacing in the Advanced paragraph attributes, but it feels risky to do it this way and is not as reliable as a dedicated feature would be.

9.-10. Reserved for some other major forgotten issues that are sure to come to me a few seconds after I submit this.

Thanks for collecting all this feedback.

It increases my respect and future hope for the product, even if not all of my ideas get implemented.

Unless of course you ignore the request for the outliner. ;-)

Email address: dhayes at geotrace dot com

"No way. Most FrameMaker templates I've worked on could not possibly be converted to XML automatically. Even my own templates, which I designed to be easily migrated to DocBook or DITA, could not be automatically converted."

While I acknowledge I could be wrong about this, I am highly skeptical that that is the case. If you know the data model, and the structure is static and predictable, then there is no reason in principle that that structure can't be mapped to some other data model, which is also static and predictable.  However, even if you are right about that, then all that means is that FrameMaker needs to support a legacy environment that is turned on by default so that when you upgrade nothing is converted over but if you enable an option then the conversion starts happening automatically.

In any case, the point is that FrameMaker fundamentally needs to be an XML authoring environment instead of XML authoring kinda sorta supported if you are willing to bite the bullet and convert to structured FM (which increasingly few people can do because the cost is so high, its hard to make a business case for most people. I know I can't and I have looked into this extensively.  Adobe has tried to pretend that converting over to structured authoring is easy but in order to do this they have to have SEVEN webinars or a 7 hour training session just to give the basics.). While a huge change, I believe this one architectural change will provide the framework to address many of the other problems and competitive disadvantages framemaker has with other products out there.

"Most of the FrameMaker docs I've inherited over the years have an insane number of styles that are not used consistently. Picking one large old book at random, there are around 100 paragraph tags and 20 character tags. No algorithm could figure out how to map most of them to DITA tags."

This is getting a bit far a field so I'll just end with this note. I wasn't talking about DITA's structure, which is incredibly restrictive (there's a reason I haven't adopted that myself). I am talking about a native XML authoring enviornment for FrameMaker. I don't care what that structure per se is as long as its an XML structure that conforms to a schema. Adobe should presumably be able to create whatever XML data model they want and then convert the binary FrameMaker data model to the XML model. They should be able to do this because its their data model. I am not saying it would be easy but I don't think there's any technical reason why it couldn't be done.

"I am talking about a native XML authoring enviornment for FrameMaker. I don't carewhat that structure per se is as long as its an XML structure that conforms to a schema. Adobe should presumably be able to create whatever XML data model they want and then convert the binary FrameMaker data model to the XML model."

It would be trivial to convert FrameMaker documents to an XML model derived from MIF, but what would be the benefit of converting a mess of FrameMaker tags to a mess of XML tags?

Mike Wickham 29. Apr 22, 2012 11:17 PM

 

12. (M) I'd like to be able to change the default marker color. More than once, I have deleted text and accidentally deleted an unnoticed marker in it. If the marker color was different than the text, it would stand out more and help prevent this error.

Among all the other requests presented on this forum: this is an old desire for me. For FM-8 i had modified th FM-internal cursors (see my website). There is, however, no chance to modifiy the location cursor (single pix vertical line). This is generated on the fly depending on the font hight (or equation hight). My request would be to have a setting in maker.ini (2 pixels wide, colour magenta):

LocationCursor = 2, magenta

Hi Kapil,

Nice talking with you and Tom at CMS/DITA North America!

Lots of great suggestions and requests here. I have only three:

• Please, please, please buy IXGen from Frank Stearns and incorporate it into FrameMaker, as John Sgammato and others have so wisely suggested.
• Please buy Enhance for FrameMaker from Sandy Brook Software and incorporate it into FrameMaker to add an outline view, a la Microsoft Word.
• Please fix the "phantom table" problem once and for all. If a table spans several pages, FrameMaker (yes, even version 10) sometimes makes a duplicate of it, but you cannot edit the "ghost" image of the table. You can tell this happens if the document's page count suddenly increases unexpectedly. The only solution is to highlight the real table, press CTRL-X (cut), and paste it back into the document again.

Thank you for asking,

Lance

As an addendum to my post, I have just had a demonstration about FM10 and items 9 seems to have been addressed. Item 7 is partially addressed (for a document by document basis). However, I still see a value for global updates and replacements by book.

"I have used every Adobe product back to PageMaker and I can assure you, it simply does not work, except for short files, such as a letter. Print to .ps and then use distiller. NEVER use save as ,pdf."

I've had no problems with saving as PDF since maybe FrameMaker 6, not even with 2000-page books.

Dear FM:

1.     I can heartily endorse a progress bar for all lengthy jobs.

2.     Make FrameMaker like other Adobe programs in file menus (endorsing previous post),

3.     colour libraries and calibration and libraries of clipart should all be common.

Rob Shell

Hi Rob! Thanks for the kind words...For basic PDF I use the print to PDF no problem (well, never say no problem...). But we have these fancy books with pretty colors that require the CMYK conversion stuff and, at least for FM9, saving as PDF is the only way to do this. I recently saw a post on this forum about a freeware program to help with this very soon (http://forums.adobe.com/message/4364571#4364571) but when I had a look at the information, it confused me even more....

Another note about Saving to PDF. I am on Windows 7, FM9, 64 bit machine. To make the Save as PDF work in a reasonable amount of time, I copy absolutely everything (I always use referenced graphics) onto my c:drive, remove all text insets, and then when I redirect the file path to the new local image folder, the Save as PDF seems to take less time. I did, as mentioned, have to detach myself from the network (this was a recent need) in order to eliminate the roaming profile issue, but I did make it work! Something else I learned about this process, again, just an FYI for everyone, is that if you go to the folder in Windows where you are generating the PDF, you can watch the tps (temporary ps) file be created, which then confirms that the process is working. Then there is a tpdf (temporary pdf) file that displays and finally your end PDF. If you just sit and watch Framemaker's hour glass, you will never know if it is working and perhaps will close it down in frustration.

I will be back later with some additional suggestions.