Recommended graphic file format for single-sourcing from Frame to Robohelp?

[Virginia Morgan]

Thank you Richard for the clarification on the gray box effect. It has been a while, but now I do remember that the .eps files were what I was thinking of - I thought I remembered an issue with .jpgs as well, but I can't be sure - it may just have been that .tif files were better quality for printing. It sounds like PNG will be the way to go for our screenshots; now I have a lot more learning to do re: creating the templates we will need for Robohelp etc. All your input has been greatly appreciated!

-Virginia 

-----Original Message-----
From: Combs, Richard [mailto:richard.combs at Polycom.com] 
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 10:04 PM
To: Virginia Morgan; John Sgammato; 'grant at hedgewizard.net'
Cc: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: Recommended graphic file format for single-sourcing from Frame to Robohelp?

Virginia Morgan wrote:
 
> Any other experience/advice is appreciated. My recent graphic design
> experience has also led me to conclude that .jpgs work well for much
> more than photos, but the main reason we didn't use them in old
> versions of FrameMaker (6.0 and before) even with photos was that we
> got the "ugly gray box" which was annoying since you couldn't see your
> output until you produced a PDF. I'm assuming that "feature" is no
> longer the case? Like John, I would prefer to work with .jpgs if they
> produced the result I need. (Working in Windows XP, Frame10 currently.)

I just noticed this message, which seems to have gotten to my inbox rather belatedly. Virginia, you're misremembering regarding the "ugly gray box." That's not from an imported JPEG, it's from an imported EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) file that doesn't include a TIFF preview. 

FM can't display EPS, so it displays the low-resolution preview image (often even uglier than the gray box) that's often included in an EPS file. If the EPS doesn't include the TIFF preview, FM just uses the gray box as a placeholder. The lovely PostScript image appears in all its glory when you print or PDF. 

Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-903-6372
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