Cleaning Character Formats

[Karen Robbins]

Thanks, Fred, maybe I was confusing format and tag. I guess I do want both
overrides and tags, though--I can use Silicon Prairie's Character Tools to
find both. As it happens, there are instances of bad practices like
"Italic" and "italic", so case would be relevant in some instances. Thanks,
Lin, for jogging my memory, too. I'll see if CudSpan tools can help as well.

--Karen

On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Fred Ridder <docudoc at hotmail.com> wrote:

> You don't indicate what version of FrameMaker you are using, so I'll try
> to keep my answers as generic and universal as possible.
>
> If you're trying to find named character styles, you should be choosing
> "Character Tag" rather than "Character Format" in the Find box. You will
> have to type the name of the tag, though, the same way you have to when
> searching for paragraph tags.
>
> If you're trying to find instances of manually applied character
> formatting (format overrides), you'll either have to search for "Character
> Format" and deal with each item in the format dialog individually, or else
> get yourself a script or plug-in that finds overrides and generates a
> hyperlinked report. Once you have the report you can jump to each override
> and either remove the formatting or apply it via named styles (tags). For
> years I've used the hunt overrides plug-ins from CudSpan (Chris
> Despopoulis) and they work just fine.
>
> BTW, if you're searching for tags or formatting, you should not be
> checking the "Consider Case" option, since that is intended for use when
> searching for a text string in the document's content. I don't know whether
> it affects tag or formatting searches or whether it is completely ignored
> (as it should be), but why select it if it's irrelevant?
>
> -Fred Ridder
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2013 12:15:10 -0700
> Subject: Cleaning Character Formats
> From: karendesign at gmail.com
> To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
>
> I want to remove rogue character formats and replace them with correct
> ones. I've used Character Tools to generate a list of formats by file so I
> know which ones are in each document of my book. I choose "Character
> Format..." in the Find/Change palette, type the character format name in
> the entry field, check the "Consider Case" checkbox, check the "Document"
> radio button to check only the open document, and click "Find."
>
> Usually, the "Find Character Format" dialog appears. I can't possibly
> remember all the properties I assigned to every format I created, and
> certainly wouldn't know the properties of a rogue or legacy style that I
> didn't create. I just want to find the format by the name assigned to it.
> Shouldn't those names appear in the scrollable entry field of the
> Find/Change palette, the same way paragraph styles do? (Not even default
> character styles show up.) Must I generate a long CT report on all styles
> to get the properties to complete this dialog?
>
> If I close this dialog and try again, a "Specify the character format to
> find" alert appears.
>
> My documents have only an A flow. I doubt the character format I'm looking
> for would be on a master page. Even if a style or two were in an unanchored
> box, for example, that doesn't explain all styles not being available or
> found.
>
> I'm sure this is a case of user error. What am I doing wrong?
>
> Thanks,
> Karen
>
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