Some suggestions for improvement of FrameMaker

[Jeff Coatsworth]

Yes, thanks the amazing (free) SetPrint plugin, you never have to worry about messing that up again.

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From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Fred Ridder
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 9:01 AM
To: rshell at iafrica.com; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: Some suggestions for improvement of FrameMaker

Rob Shell wrote:

> 12. Get rid of the "The font has changed" message. It hasn't, it won't.
Sorry, Rob, but you're a little off base on this one. What FrameMaker tells you is not that "the font has changed", but instead is that "the font *information* has changed". It only tells you this when the font metadata--specifically the font metrics information that comes from the Windows printer driver--has changed when you change to a different printer, and therefore a different driver with its own font metrics data. Admittedly, the differences in metrics data (high-precision dimensions for each glyph and for inter-glyph spacing) are small and subtle, but they can add up to enought that some text lines that are very close to the maximum line length may need to break differently. And a line break changing can potentially cause the length of the paragraph to change. And a change in the length of a paragraph can potentially cause a difference in how that page (and all subsequent pages in the chapter) breaks. Anyone who has opened a precisely laid out Word document to another computer only to find mangled tables, page breaks in the wrong places, and a different page count for the document will understand that a change in font metrics *can* affect the document, and will appreciate that FrameMaker at least warns you about the possibility.

Adobe did make one major improvement in regard to the changed font metrics issue a few releases back, when they allowed FrameMaker to set its own default printer independent of the Windows default printer. If you always use this default printer (e.g., "Adobe PDF") and never change to a different printer driver (e.g., making a PDF that you then print from Acrobat when you need a hard copy rather than sending the document directly to the printer from FrameMaker), you will never again be b othered by the "font information has changed" warning message.

-Fred Ridder
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