FrameMaker9 Character Set - Dixieland problems

Mon Jun 13 11:52:00 PDT 2011

This is probably the wrong day to tell you this, so you're welcome to lay it aside for another day, BUT if you have "many overriders" in your paragraphs, you have yet to fully discover and appreciate what FrameMaker is meant to do. Let your overrides be few. FrameMaker is all about standardization and consistency, with an eye toward making your work life easier.

Others can speak to this knowledgeably, and I'll be glad to stand corrected, but if I recall correctly, the changes between FM 7 and FM 9 that are affecting you in this particular circumstance have to do with the unicode features of FM 9 that weren't in FM 7.

In any case, you're probably either going to have to suffer through a lot of manual work or clean up your overrides, creating new standard styles where appropriate. If you take the second path, you'll save yourself grief in the future and the clean import approach won't be nearly as painful.

Regards,
Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Ragnar Hanås [mailto:ragnar.hanas at betamed.se] 
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2011 12:13 PM
To: 'De Rosier, Edward'; Pinkham, Jim
Cc: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: FrameMaker9 Character Set - Dixieland problems

Thanks for the replies. However, I have many overriders in my paragraphs, so this will include a lot of manual work in a 460 page book. There must be some explanation for the switch in interpretation of some picture fonts when moving to FM9. When I choose a Dixieland symbol from scratch for a bullet in FM9, it uses the same letter coding as in FM7. So the problem seems to appear when opening a FM7 document in FM9. The problem also appears in body text, i.e. another Dixieland symbol shows in FM9 than in FM7. When changing the font to Arial a different letter appears.
Regards,
Ragnar

-----Original Message-----
From: De Rosier, Edward [mailto:Edward.DeRosier at anritsu.com]
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2011 6:56 PM
To: Pinkham, Jim; ragnar.hanas at betamed.se
Cc: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: FrameMaker9 Character Set - Dixieland problems

Hi Ragnar,

The solution from Jim is a good one.

Also, my current work group uses Century Schoolbook as our standard Body font.  The symbols are still as I originally described, but FrameMaker 9 has a built‑in Character Palette.

With your cursor in the desired location, open the palette by using:

File  ==>  Utilities  ==>  Character Palette...

The top list box in the palette displays the font, and you can select from the list of those available on your computer.  You can select more than one character from the palette and can type in between those characters, but if you use the mouse to move your cursor, the palette closes.

Century Schoolbook includes the Less-Than-or-Equal and the Greater-Than-or-Equal as characters within the font family (not symbol fonts).    On my system, some of the palette characters work, and some do not.  I do not know how the FrameMaker interface is intended to handle these symbols, so I just accept those that work with gratitude    8-)

Your standards fonts my have the characters you desire.  And you can also select from the Symbol font family (you will need to apply symbol from your Character Catalog).

Best of luck,

Ed DeRosier 

-----Original Message-----
From: Pinkham, Jim [mailto:Jim.Pinkham at voith.com]
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2011 5:57 AM
To: Ragnar Hanås; De Rosier, Edward; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: FrameMaker9 Character Set - Dixieland problems

FWIW, this is the approach I'm still using, almost six months later. Sounds more complicated than it is: Get a clean template with the right formats. Then apply it. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Ragnar Hanås [mailto:ragnar.hanas at betamed.se]
Sent: Sunday, June 12, 2011 9:52 PM
To: Pinkham, Jim; 'DeRosier, Edward'; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: FrameMaker9 Character Set - Dixieland problems

I just opened my first documents from FM 7.2 in FM 9 and all my Dixieland fonts in bulleted lists are mixed up. Strangely, the Geographic Symbols seem to work fine in bulleted lists. There has to be a simpler solution to this than outlined below? Dixieland symbols are also mixed up in plain text, as are Symbol Prop so the problem does not only apply to the bulleted lists.
Are there specific problems with certain fonts?
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Ragnar Hanas
Uddevalla Hospital, Sweden

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Pinkham, Jim
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2011 9:39 PM
To: DeRosier, Edward; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: FrameMaker9 Character Set - GTE

Ed, I ran into something similar to this with my migration from FM 7 to FM 9 in docs I've been working on this week. All of my bulleted lists were messed up because of FM 9's "translation" of certain characters into different characters and the ensuing "loss" of the appropriate font to be applied to the symbols (Wingdings, in my case).

I consulted the following two resources:

http://iconlogic.blogs.com/weblog/2010/08/adobe-framemaker-9-but-i-dont-
want-a-plain-round-bullet.html
http://www.io.com/~tcm/etwr2472/guides/frame9/frame_tags.html

These should get you on the path. 

Long story short: I defined a font-specific character format for each of my bullet symbols and applied it to each of the five different bullet styles that needed it. I did this in a clean doc created from a virgin, minimalist template and further stripped everything out of the new doc that I possibly could that wasn't related to the formats I desired. Then I stored this in my templates folder and imported this stripped-down, format-specific template into my book.

I have two variables, one that uses the LTE symbol and another that use a hollow arrow symbol. I took a similar approach with that.

That's as much detail as I can give you on this hectic day, but it worked well.

Good luck!
Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of DeRosier, Edward
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2011 1:02 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: FrameMaker9 Character Set - GTE

Hi Framers,

I am haing a problem with the character set in FrameMaker 9 (TCS2).

The character set document lists the same keystrokes as in previous FM sets for Greater Than or Equal To (GTE).
The GTE character is created in standard font, and is then changed to "Symbol" font.

[Ctrl][q] [3]  =>  GTE  (this produces a small box) or
[Alt][0179]    =>  GTE  (this works)

[Ctrl][q] [#]  =>  LTE  (this works)
or
[Alt][0163]    =>  LTE  (this works)

Problem:
  [Ctrl][q] [3]  ==>  S with caron, but not GTE in Symbol font
  [Alt][0179]    ==>  superscript 3, and also GTE  in Symbol font

In my past experience, the S with a caron accent was changed to GTE in Symbol font.
Now, however, this produces a small box in Symbol font when created by using [Ctrl][q] [3].
While the ASCII character work-around is available, I am concerned with opening FM7.2 documents in FM9.  Will previously created GTE characters be lost?
This is important because we are just beginning to use FM9, and all of our previous FrameMaker documents were created with FM7.2.

I have opened a book of files (created with FM7) in FM9, updated the entire book and saved all files.  Then I checked the GTE characters, and they looked fine.  Trying to add additional GTE symbols resulted in the same problem when using [Ctrl][q] [3].
This seems to indicated that the GTE symbols are "safe", but I am suspicous of this new behavior and seek assurances.

My system:
Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2
Version 9.0p230

Windows XP Professional
Version 2002, Service Pack 2

Dell
Intel Core2 Duo CPU
E8500 @ 3.16GHz
3.25 GB RAM

Is anyone else experiencing this same behavior with FM9 ?

We are a small group of tech writers, and we are all experiencing the same behavior of FM9.

Thanks for your help and opinions.

Ed DeRosier
Senior Technical Writer
Anritsu Company

Edward.DeRosier at anritsu.com
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