Disappearing anchored frames: strange FrameMaker bug

[Jeremy H. Griffith]

On Mon, 7 Dec 2009 08:44:33 +0000, Steve Rickaby 
<srickaby at wordmongers.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>At 13:44 -0800 4/12/09, Jeremy H. Griffith wrote:
>
>> >the only unusual thing about this book is that
>>>the source files were brought in from Word via RTF
>>
>>That could very likely be the culprit. The RTF and Word 
>>import filters are VERY BAD, and introduce many strange 
>>artifacts into the resulting Frame file.  These can and 
>>will bite you again and again. MIF washing will do no good.
>
>Ah. Will anything else?

Not that I know of, unless someone has developed a plugin
to deal with this.  Or written a FrameScript to do the
process, which I think is possible.

>>That's why we strongly advise people to do all Word 
>>import by copying the Word doc content and using Paste 
>>Special to put it in as "Plain Text". It's the only way 
>>we know to avoid the sort of pain you are experiencing 
>>now.  It may seem to take longer to do it that way, but 
>>it gives youa nice stable document,and that's well worth it.
>
>Noted.
>
>>Even at this point, you might still consider that, but 
>>after you've put a lot of work in it's harder to bring 
>>yourself to do it...
>
>I cannot do that at this stage from the Word sources, as 
>the book has been heavily edited (and typeset). Would 
>cutting and pasting from the FrameMaker document into a 
>clean new FrameMaker document and reformatting work?

Yes.  It doesn't matter where you get the plain text from.
I'd suggest if you go that way, use Frame to convert all
your tables to text first; then on the other end, convert
back to tables.  That should minimize the pain for them.

The graphics I'd reimport, especially since that's where
your problem manifested.  Hopefully you don't have callouts
to create...

You might want to try it on a page or two first, to get a
feel for how much work is involved.  If it's a lot, well,
Rick Quattro develops plugins for such tasks at reasonable
cost...  but it may be less trouble than it sounds like.
Worst case, if it doesn't help, you'll know for sure that
it's a Frame bug.

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  <jeremy at omsys.com>  http://www.omsys.com/