Pagination FM 11

[Fred Ridder]

Note that the message you get when you change to a different printer is not about changing *fonts". It is a warning that the font *metrics* have changed. Font metrics are the very precise dimensions of each glyph you use in a given font. In a Windows system, the font metrics are contained in the printer driver because it is the printer driver that ultimately draws the glyphs on the page based on the mathematical descriptions that are in the font file. If you change to a different printer driver, there are guaranteed to be differences in the dimensions of at least some glyphs. The individual differences may be tiny and imperceptible to you, but they are differences nonetheless. And if there are enough of them in a given line, the line may break in different place (one word earlier or later). And if one line breaks in a different place, the change ripples forward and that can cause the length of a paragraph to change (a short line may appear or disappear from the end of the paragraph) or a table row may need to expand or contract. And if you have changes in the lenghts of several paragraphs or several table rows on a page, that can easily throw off the page break, and that change then causes ripple effects all the way to the end of the file.

Note that this very same mechanism is at work in MS Word, and is the reason why a Word doc file almost never prints out the same way (in fact, can be *vastly* different) on two different systems. The difference is that FrameMaker warns you when it knows there is a change in the font metrics because it knows these can accumulate and ripple throughout the document. Microsoft doesn't want to bother users with warnings when a problem might not occur in all cases, or when it might be a problem that the user won't notice. Maybe that would take all the sport out of it. Or maybe warning about a possible problem would raise users' expectations that the software would work predictably (if not reliably) most of the time rather than reinforcing the perception that "Word just happens". 

And the piece of software you refer to is the SetPrint plugin from Sundorne Communications. 
See www.sundorne.com/FrameMaker/Freeware/setPrint.htm

-Fred Ridder

From: judy at hypack.com
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2013 10:38:35 -0500
Subject: Re: Pagination FM 11

Harro and Rebecca,

It looks like you're onto something. 



When I change my printer to Adobe PDF with the "offending" FM open, I get a warning about changing fonts. When I say [OK], the FM display of the document matches the PDF output from before with the table all on one page instead of split across a page break.



In the past, I think I'd used a handy little utility someone had posted that automatically set my printer to Adobe PDF when I opened Framemaker. That was when I was in FM10 so I wouldn't have had this problem then, but I recently upgraded so FM 11 is not set that way.  



When I have some spare time, I'll have to look for that little program again and learn a bit more about changing fonts.



Thank you! 

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