Keyboard shortcuts -- Was: Re: making stuff unconditional in FM12

Sun Mar 30 10:22:36 PDT 2014

I'm going to disagree only with the keyboard shortcuts comment -- they 
sort of fixed it is the most generous comment I can make. If you were a 
dedicated keyboardist, the "new" keyboard shortcut is slower than -- 
well molasses in January. On first starting Frame you wait the first 
time on the "blinking" menu to first appear -- several seconds. On 
subsequent use of the keyboard shortcut, it's hit or miss. It appears 
that the longer your paragraph format list is, the slower it is because 
I don't have trouble with the Character catalog. And many times, in the 
paragraph formatting, Frame flat doesn't recognize the first letter of 
the format. It will stop on a totally different letter forcing you to 
mouse the selection as subsequent taps of the desired letter combination 
does not bring up the correct format desired.

For years I have carefully crafted my templates to take advantage of 
those keyboard shortcuts. The loss was devastating. During the time that 
they were missing entirely, someone on this list mentioned alternative 
keyboard shortcuts which I have forgotten as I always used F8 and F9 
with the alphabet letter. I'm wondering if that alternate route still 
works.

Regards,
Linda Pelton

On 3/30/2014 11:27 AM, Scott Prentice wrote:
> Aw .. c'mon .. that's a bit harsh, don't you think?
>
> I'm not a fan of the "new" (since FM9) UI either, but personally 
> attacking the people behind the current product really isn't fair. The 
> current team developing FrameMaker *is* very interested in customer 
> feedback, and does listen. (And it's certainly not the programmers' 
> faults .. they implement the features they are told to.)
>
> The new UI is a significant change from the old standard, but can be 
> tamed if you're willing to spend the time to learn how to make it do 
> what you want. There are training videos and other info about setting 
> up workspaces and other features, and with FM12, they have fixed most 
> of the missing keyboard shortcuts (I believe). I totally agree that 
> there are some frustrating aspects to it, but that's the new world of 
> UI design. If you don't like it, stick with FM8. No one is forcing you 
> to upgrade (although they do encourage it).
>
> As for XML editors .. I think you'll find that XMetaL is considerably 
> lacking when compared to FM. Especially if you're planning on 
> generating PDFs .. you'll either need to take a step back on your 
> formatting and layout, or you'll still need to use FM for PDF 
> publishing. (But I am biased .. I'll admit that freely.)
>
> Cheers,
>
> ...scott
> On 3/29/14 4:08 PM, Zimmerman, Gary wrote:
>>
>> **
>>
>> I swear it's like the Adobe FrameMaker developers do absolutely NO 
>> usability testing, get absolutely NO feedback from existing 
>> customers, focus groups, or anything else before they foist on us a 
>> crappy, untested GUI that their offshore developers implemented in 
>> some kind of cultural vacuum.(Not offshore culture so much as 
>> programmer culture - before any programmers get offended, there are 
>> plenty of exceptional programmers who have a GREAT sense of usability 
>> and customer needs - apparently Adobe hasn't hired any for the FM 
>> team, nor any usability/human factors consultants.)
>>
>> The programming underneath may be great (I doubt it, with the general 
>> fragility of the thing for many releases now), but the usability if 
>> off-the-charts bad.Like something designed by a bunch of college 
>> programmers who have no concept of building a usable product, but 
>> instead think "more is better" so they toss in everything figuring 
>> that they'll have something for everyone, and end up with such a hash 
>> salad that you spend more time jumping through GUI hoops than you do 
>> productive writing.(Remember what college kids did when word 
>> processors introduce lots of fun fonts to play with - the FM 9 and 10 
>> GUI is pretty much the GUI equivalent of "ransom letter" tech writing.)
>>
>> I can remember when FM was unquestionably a better choice than Word 
>> for any serious documentation work.Now they're approaching parity.I 
>> don't know about FM8, but when we jumped from 7 to 9, it was all 
>> downhill after that.We're on 10 now, debating upgrading.We're also 
>> moving to a DITA CMS and Xmetal editor - much less powerful, but it 
>> does what it needs to do without being an obstacle to the writers.We 
>> didn't even consider using FM as our XML editor, though the 
>> transition might have been less of an issue for our writers who are 
>> used to FM.
>>
>> Sorry to rant.I LIKE FM.I'm just so sorry they messed with the GUI 
>> and messed up so badly with 9 and onwards.They may fix it to be 
>> decent again incrementally, but like Windows 8, they should have 
>> scrapped the whole thing when they realized what a horrible blunder 
>> they made instead of turning a deaf ear and insisting everything was 
>> great for so long, when real users knew it wasn't so.Credibility 
>> gone.Maybe 11 is better, maybe 12 even better.Don't know if I'll ever 
>> get to try them.
>>
>> -- garyZ
>>
>> **
>>
>> **
>>
>> *From:*framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com 
>> [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] *On Behalf Of *Rick Quatro
>> *Sent:* Saturday, March 29, 2014 7:50 AM
>> *To:* 'rebecca officer'; framers at lists.frameusers.com
>> *Subject:* RE: making stuff unconditional in FM12
>>
>> Hi Rebecca,
>>
>> I see what you mean and agree that if you want to quickly remove all 
>> conditions from a selection, it is painful. They should put the 
>> Unconditional button back in, or have a modifier key were you could 
>> uncheck everything with one click.
>>
>> Rick
>>
>> Rick Quatro
>>
>> Carmen Publishing Inc.
>>
>> 585-366-4017
>>
>> rick at frameexpert.com <mailto:rick at frameexpert.com>
>>
>> *From:*framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com 
>> <mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com> 
>> [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] *On Behalf Of *rebecca 
>> officer
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, March 26, 2014 11:19 PM
>> *To:* framers at lists.frameusers.com <mailto:framers at lists.frameusers.com>
>> *Subject:* making stuff unconditional in FM12
>>
>> Hi everyone
>>
>> I just went looking for the "unconditional" button in the revamped 
>> Conditional Tags pod in FM12. It ain't there.
>>
>> Am I just being blind? Or is there another one-or-two-click way to 
>> make stuff unconditional?
>>
>> At the moment, it looks like I either have to go the Copy Special 
>> route, or manually untick all the tick boxes. To add insult to 
>> injury, they go On > As Is > Off, so I have to click each tickbox 
>> *twice* to clear it. Seriously, Adobe??
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Rebecca
>>
>>
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