[Framers] new framemaker release

[Bernard Aschwanden (Publishing Smarter)]

> I'm hoping to hear something about the new TCS 2017 and FrameMaker 2017
releases that are available today from those who have had a chance to see
and use them. 

Hi Craig,

A few short notes on my experience. I was involved with the beta testing, so
this is my 2 cents having used it for about 3 months or so.

I pestered for a bunch of things that likely are NOT as big at first. For
example, the icons in the Paragraph Designer drove me nuts, and we have text
there again. I find that so much easier than the pictures that, even after
years, still meant nothing. I'd hover and wait for the popup and I used the
thing daily. Grrr. Thanks for that fix :)

In the "find/change" things are alpha sorted. So you don't have Unresolved
Cross Ref and then also Any Cross Ref, but instead they are under "C" for
"Cross Reference".

Hi Res monitor support. I run dual monitors, and it's great. I can drag
stuff from my MS Surface Book at 3000/2000 resolution to my second monitor
at 1680/1050 and they resize "on the fly". I can actually see it in two
sizes as it moves between monitors. Pretty cool, but again, nothing you
notice immediately.

I also pestered about the autocorrect and that goofy red line. I think I
made the team slowly type a word like 'conditional' and asked why 'c' is ok,
as is 'co' and 'con' but then as I keep typing I need to get to 'condition'
before the software is happy again and THEN if adding 'a' it is wrong AGAIN.
So they fixed it and I'm not second guessing my typing as words are entered.
Minor feature, but a major impact.

It took me some time to get my head into the shortcuts and menus. I use a
lot of the ESC stuff, but also a ton of the "alt, f, s" to file > save, or
"alt, f, i, f" for file > import > format. Now, I press F7 all over the
place and get a context specific menu. Love that more and more as a power
user.

There is other stuff, and a lot of it is bigger and will be mentioned by
others, but this is a quick list of little things that impact my day-to-day
use. Odds are the Welcome Screen, Xref Pod (searchable, and takes a bit of
getting used to, but pretty cool), updated DITA templates (for those who
work with DITA and want to use the 'out of the box' templates to start), and
a bunch of other goodies.

Oh, almost forgot. Content Filters. For DITA. So now I can build my DITA and
use @product, @platform, @audience, etc. From there I "File > Publish" to
HTML5. In the setup you can enable filters that create HTML5 output with the
option to 'select' and display all content, but also allow people to filter
content based on the attributes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsAQXmRxIJc&list=PLJL3v-Ayk9rSIIoCi-rysO3f4i
NKtZvgB&index=2

About 50 seconds in you really get to see this happening. If you create
DITA, this is worth seeing (my 2 cents).

Bernard


Bernard Aschwanden
bernard at publishingsmarter.com

www.publishingsmarter.com

Write Less. Write Better.