How to use Chinese characters as autonumbers, variables, etc.

[Russ Ward]

Hi,

(FM2015, Win 7)

I'd like to use Chinese characters in several dialog boxes, such as the following as a static autonumber for note paragraphs:

注

I'd also like to use these characters in variables, cross-reference formats, etc. The dialog boxes accept the characters but the document text just shows question marks. I don't know enough about these character sets to make it work. Can anybody help out an Asian character noob here?

Thanks,

Russ

[Bob_Niland]

Unless FM has been enhanced in later versions, the autonumbering is pretty inflexible. It wants to do only one of 5 things (this is based on observed FM7 behavior):

• a+/A+: a-z or A-Z, rolling over to aa or AA, etc.
  (whether this is exclusively Latin, or might follow your localization is not known to me)
• n+: decimal counting from any arbitrary non-negative starting value over the range 0-65536
  (attempting negative immediately increments to the twos complement of that)
• r+/R+: 0-Roman numeral counting starting at any arbitrary non-negative value over the range 0-MMMMMMMMMCMXCIX (9999 decimal)

If you attempt to use an arbitrary Unicode character as the starting value for an 'a' or 'A' sequence, I would expect it to immediately roll over to the Latin (local?) character sequence for the decimal equivalent of that.

What's needed is a new U+ counter, or better yet, arbitrary sequences defined by you, much like the Custom option for Table Footnotes.

[Russ Ward]

Bob, thanks for the reply. I'm not really talking about numbering, though, just text really. I also want to put these characters in variables, cross-reference formats, etc. If I can enter them as document text, shouldn't I be able to use them in these gizmos? It seems I shouldn't be the first to encounter this issue, but who knows how much Chinese is published with FM. Multibyte characters like UTF8 work fine but I guess there is something different about these(?). I just don't know anything about how the encoding might work.

Russ

[Bob_Niland]

re: Multibyte characters like UTF8 work fine ...

UTF8 would be Unicode, which I take it the document is not using.

Anyone who can help may want to know what font and encoding the document uses. Encodings might include GB18030, Big5, and of course Unicode. I know how to enter Unicode in dialogs (as do you). I have no clue what the story is with the other encodings, which may use between 1 and 4 bytes for various characters, and may be treated as overlay/codepage fonts when used.

[Mike Wickham]

I agree that a new U+ counter would be very useful. There are special

numbering fonts that have characters representing numbers in circles or

squares that would make excellent autonumber bullets. Some of these are

capable of creating circled numbers well over 100, but they cannot be

used automatically because FrameMaker wants to create multi-digit

numbers as separate characters. So, instead of a circled 10, you get a

circled 1 and a circled 0.

I had suggested the U+ counter as a new feature a couple of versions

ago, but it never happened. I just resubmitted it into the newer

bug/feature base:

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=search

If anyone likes the idea, you can go to the above link. Then make sure

FrameMaker is listed as the product and click Execute Search. The full

list of bugs and feature requests will display. The U+ Autonumber

Counter feature request (ID 4021500) will display near the top. You can

click on it and then add your vote at the bottom of the page to help

encourage Adobe. You do need to register and sign into bugbase to do so,

if you have not already. I believe your regular Adobe ID works.

[Bob_Niland]

Unicode provides "enclosed alphanumerics" that offers 1-20 in circles, open or filled. Good luck getting FM to use them.

Unicode also provides a combining circle (\u20dd) which would further require that any FM support for custom numbering sequences allow each element to be a character sequence, and not just a single character.

But then as far as I know, FM doesn't yet support Unicode combining characters at all, and that's probably a prerequisite wish list item. Full support of Unicode actually has lots of stuff like this, and is not trivial.

[Russ Ward · Accepted solution]

OK, well I happened to figure it out, thanks to some clues in an old thread:

Chinese fonts in FrameMaker 9

To make it work, I created a character format that uses the MingLiU font, then used it as a building block in the autonumbers, variable definitions, etc. Like magic, the Chinese characters that I pasted into the dialog boxes now appear correctly in the document.

I am happy that it is working, but I do wish that I understood why.

Thanks to all who weighed in.

Russ