[Framers] Toggling Condition Indicators Individually

[Fred Ridder]

Unless something has changed in recent versions of FrameMaker, there is no need to restrict yourself to "non-main-content areas" on master pages. The main text frames on the master pages are only *placeholder* frames. You can fill them up with notes and instructions and whatever  else you want to put in there, and none of it will ever appear in the deliverable document. And since you can add more master pages beyond what you actually need for your document design, there's a relatively unlimited amount of space available.


I used this trick extensively when I was working with a group of more than 25 writers at a previous employer (back in the FM6 days) when we were migrating a hundred or so documents from Word to FrameMaker. I haven't had need to use this trick in about a decade, but I can't imagine that Adobe would have changed the basic document model so completely that it no longer works.

-FR

________________________________
From: Framers <framers-bounces+docudoc=hotmail.com at lists.frameusers.com> on behalf of Peter Gold <peter at petergold.photography>
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2016 4:56 PM
To: Lin Sims
Cc: Frame Users
Subject: Re: [Framers] Toggling Condition Indicators Individually

Have you thought of displaying these and other useful reminders, hints,
keys, legends, indicators, etc., in header/footer or other non-main-content
areas on master pages? You can contain them in anchored frames whose parent
paragraph was conditionalized so that a single show/hide command would be
the only action needed. This "master" condition name and a brief
instruction could be displayed in a non-printing color, so it would always
be visible.

This is one missing FrameMaker feature that, IIRC, has never been
requested, namely a place to display such info outside the main content
area. Layout applications, like InDesign, offer such non-printing bleed and
slug areas. In FM, the convention has been, when needed, to design oversize
pages and use cropping marks.

HTH

On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 3:24 PM, Lin Sims <ljsims.ml at gmail.com> wrote:

> Earlier I got excellent advice on how to build conditional expressions. I'm
> hoping someone here has thoughts on the above. This question actually
> concerns the same set of files with 8 or 10 different condition tags in it.
>
> My boss has a hard time remembering what each condition indicator is
> actually indicating. As a result, he has asked me to create numerous
> versions of the document set that have various conditions turned on, but
> only one of the indicators being visible.
>
> That is to say, if the document has conditions A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H,
> he wants to see the information tagged A, D, F, and G, but he only wants
> the INDICATOR for F to be visible.
>
> Right now I'm using MIF snippets to reset the colors for A, D, and G to
> black on white (having discovered that As-Is just doesn't cut it), and
> another MIF snippet to reset them to their normal colors, but it sure would
> be nice if I could toggle the indicators for individual conditions. The way
> I'm doing it is a bit error prone, and it is also very tedious.
>
> Is this something that could be done with an ExpressScript or MIF editing?
> Is it worth putting individually toggleable condition indicators in as a
> feature request with Adobe? Am I the only person with an issue like this?
> --
> Lin Sims
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