[Framers] extra space - with adjacent formats in variables

[Monique Semp]

Hello, Framers,

Unstructured FrameMaker, 2015 (on Windows).

I’ve found that FrameMaker adds an unwanted space between adjacent format specifiers in variable definitions. It’s not only visible in appearance, but an actual space that shows up in PDF output.

My goal is to create a variable where the value is in “filepath” character format and has an embedded portion that’s in “varname” format. (Recognize those DITA tag names?!). The point is to have most of the package filename in the “filepath” font, but parts of the filename are the date in YYYYMMDD format and a version, so I want to put those in the “varname” format.

I tried “<filepath>Win7_ICS_<varname><major>-<minor>-<patch>_YYYYMMDD<Default ¶ Font><filepath>.zip<Default ¶ Font>”, which should do the trick. But  although all the chars are in the expected format (“filepath” or “varname”), there’s a very large looking space between the “YYMMDD” and “.zip” parts.

When I click the instance of the variable in the open file’s window, the variable highlights as usual, EXCEPT for the space, which doesn’t highlight at all.

I was hoping that this was just a viewing-in-FrameMaker problem that wouldn’t manifest itself in the PDF, but no such luck. Not only is the spacing visible, there must be an actual space because if I try Ctrl-F to find “DD.zip”, nothing is found. But if I search for “ .zip”, it’s found.

The problem is not with the specific formats, but anytime there are two adjacent formats in the variable definition. I experimented with several combos in the hope that maybe the problem was with the space in the “<Default ¶ Font>” format name, but it didn’t matter which formats I used.

Any workarounds?

-Monique