MIF fragments

[Kanti.Mann at schange.com]

Thanks very much Rebecca/all. 

Unwanted conditions, and other components, seem to be beyond anything that 
Adobe thinks would be good to address. 

Add-ons sound like a reasonable solution. 


Kanti 




"rebecca officer" <rebecca.officer at alliedtelesis.co.nz> 
01/15/2008 04:25 PM

To
<framers at lists.frameusers.com>, <Kanti.Mann at schange.com>
cc

Subject
Re: MIF fragments






Hi Kanti 

We've never used MIF fragments to create a new variable, only to change 
the values of existing variables. To do that, you just open the MIF 
fragment in FM, open your target book, select all the files in the book, 
and use File > Import > Formats to import the variable definitions from 
the MIF fragment. Which is what you said, so yes.

I should have made the note about not saving the MIF fragment in FM more 
emphatic: make it read-only so that you CAN'T save it by accident. The 
problem isn't that you kill your MIF fragment if you save it, the problem 
is that you can't tell that you've killed it unless you notice that the 
file size has suddenly gone up heaps. Otherwise you only find out that 
it's stuffed after you've overwritten system variables that you wanted to 
leave untouched. Aargh!

I've posted this message to the list so other people can see that info 
too.

On unwanted conditionals, they seem to creep back in from *any* file that 
links to the cleaned-up file. That seems to include books, text insets, 
generated TOCs, backup files etc. Using native FM, you can't clear them 
out of book files, so the only solutions are plug-ins, like Diane 
recommended in another thread today (do any of those clear books files?), 
deleting the book file and making a new one, or editing the book MIF file. 
I've never tried any of the plug-ins. Making a new book is mostly easy. 
Getting rid of unwanted conditions is a right pain - try the plug-ins.

Cheers, Rebecca


>>> <Kanti.Mann at schange.com> 16/01/08 05:31 >>>
Hello Rebecca: 

I read your article in Framers about using MIF fragments.  Seems like a 
brilliant idea!

What I was unclear about was how you would get the Variable definitions 
back into a set of documents. 

You note never to save the document in FM again: makes sense. 

Are you saying that you'd open the MIF fragment in Frame, import variables 

into other files, and then exit the Frag file without saving? 

Do you do this with conditions, too?  I'd love a way to get rid of 
unwanted Conditions (no longer used), since there's currently no 
way that I know of to globally remove them. 

Thanks much.


Kanti 

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