Typing conditional text

[Chris Despopoulos]

This looks like part of a bigger problem with character ranges. It's understandable that you would get this behavior where arrowing from one direction makes the transition point show one property, and from the other direction the transition point shows another.  The fact that the Enter key (new pgf) is inconsistent between versions of Maker highlights problems with pgfs at the end of a char range.

If you apply bold to a char range that includes the last char in a pgf, then Maker will assume the whole pgf should be bolded.  Using the Default Font setting in the fmt catalog won't change it back to its default properties.  I've found that you should always have a space between the last formatted char and the pgf marker, and give it Default Formatting.  Likewise, if cond text is not for the complete paragraph, it's possible for there to be similar problems at the end-of-pgf, but those problems really only surface at the FDK level -- users should not see those problems.  

For FDK developers, this is compounded by inconsistent results when you use the End-Of-Pgf token for text loc offsets.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it acts like some location within the pgf, and sometimes it acts like infinity (sort of). So it's tricky to find these last characters and fix them.  

I haven't verified this problem in Maker 9, but I would be surprised to see it fixed there.  I also didn't realize cond text had different behavior between Maker 7 and Maker 8.  I hope to noodle around with that to see what it means for the FDK.  But for users, I strongly suggest you have a space between the last char and the pgf marker whenever you intend to apply formatting to the last char.

cud




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[SNIP...]
Lynne Price Says...
   By the way, I found a surprise in the 7.x behavior also. Suppose you 
have unconditional text followed by conditional text in one paragraph. If 
you click in the unconditional portion and then press the right arrow until 
the insertion point is between the unconditional and conditional material 
and then type a character, the character will not be conditional. However, 
if you click in the conditional portion and then press the left arrow until 
the insertion point is between the two portions and then type a character, 
the character will be conditional. The same is true for font properties. As 
you type new characters, FrameMaker applies the properties of the adjacent 
characters. If those properties are different to the left and right of 
where you are typing, FrameMaker remembers how the insertion point was set. 
If you move the insertion point with the arrow keys, FrameMaker changes the 
properties assigned to new content when you cross a border between text 
ranges with different properties but does not change them when you simply 
reach the border.
[SNIP...]