[Framers] weird bug - Variable at start of paragraph sometimes vanishes

[tammyvb at spectrumwritingllc.com]

Hi John,

Weird indeed, but what is even weirder is that I encountered this problem
myself a couple of months ago when I was using ePub to convert my FM source
to HTML5. It was one flippin' variable out of many that I  had in the source
files and it also involved conditional text. I know this is really, really
pulling at straws, but a couple of plug-ins that I was using and therefore,
affecting the Framemaker FDK, appeared to be the issue. (It was a
head-banging, feet-stomping, gut-wailing  investigation), but this was what
appeared to work:

The solution is to open each FM document that is generating with missing
variables and do the following:
- From the 'Show/Hide Conditional Text' tab, select the 'Show All' radio
button (make sure to have the show condition indicators selected) and then
select 'Apply'.
- confirm that the conditional text settings are as expected and where there
are problems fix.
-  From the 'Show/Hide Conditional Text' tab, select the 'Show As Per
Condition" radio button (make sure to have the show condition indicators
deselected), set the conditions accordingly, and then select 'Apply'. Do
this for both conditons.
- Save the FrameMaker file.

All my FrameMaker files were stable after that.

And short of assuming that I somehow had pleased the previously pissed-off
FrameMaker gods, I have no other explanation as to why this worked (I had my
rationale for it at the time), but it did.

I feel your pain.

TVB


Tammy Van Boening
Tammy dot vanboening at spectrumwritingllc dot com
www.spectrumwritingllc.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Framers
<framers-bounces+tammyvb=spectrumwritingllc.com at lists.frameusers.com> On
Behalf Of John Sgammato
Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2019 12:16 PM
To: Framers List <framers at frameusers.com>
Subject: [Framers] weird bug - Variable at start of paragraph sometimes
vanishes

I've never seen this before; it looks like a bug.
FM2015, unstructured.
I have a big book with many variables and some conditions. In many (but not
all) cases, a variable that starts a paragraph is present but invisible.
Specifically,
*Note: AGM only.*
AGM is the variable. In some places I see *Note AGM only.* and in many
places I see *Note  only.* The latter still have the variable marker in
place and selectable, and when I select it, the invisible marker is still
assigned to the variable with the value AGM.
If I replace the variable, then it appears and it seems to stay, but I don't
know why it vanished in the first place, how to reproduce it, or how to make
it never happen again.
A clue: The doc originally had many many AGM only notes as text. Then we
started rebranding the product while keeping our own name as well,
publishing "blue" and "orange" versions of the doc. For the orange version,
the variable = AGM, and for the blue doc it's IVGM. To set the variable
throughout the doc, I replaced the text AGM with the variable, then copied
the variable and did a Find/Replace By Pasting (not a text Find/Replace).
That got the variable into place everywhere. I am not sure that's a factor,
because I think there are too many notes that still show the variable to
account for them all having been manual operations (and thus the bu came
from the automated F/R step).
Has anyone seen this?
Is there any solution other than manually replacing each invisible variable?

-- 

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