Posts Tagged ‘FrameMaker’
How to Use System Variables in Adobe FrameMaker to Create Automatically-Updated Meta Information
Adobe FrameMaker comes with a wealth of built-in SYSTEM VARIABLES. They are all listed in the VARIABLES pod. You can create fresh and automatically-updated meta-information (like chapter and page numbers, etc.) easily by using them. Here is how the variables pod look for a newly created FM 12 document: (Click to enlarge the images) When…
Read MoreHow to Create a Structured FrameMaker Document from an Unstructured FM Document by using a Conversion Table
The future belongs to structured authoring but what to do with all that unstructured legacy FrameMaker files sitting on our hard-drives? The obvious answer is of course start to convert them into structured FM documents. If you have Adobe FrameMaker it’s not that hard a process either. Here is a simple way to convert unstructured…
Read MoreFour Basic DITA Elements in Adobe FrameMaker – Topic, Concept, Task, Reference
There are four basic DITA elements that you can create easily in Adobe FrameMaker 12: Topic Concept Task Reference Topic A topic consists of a single self-contained subject matter. When created through the DITA > New DITA File menu option, a FrameMaker DITA topic looks like this: NOTE: To view the tags, select View >…
Read MoreFramemaker 12 DITA Tutorial – How to Create a Topic, Concept, Task, or Reference
© Ugur Akinci Creating an XML DITA document is so easy when you have Adobe FrameMaker 12 because everything is built-in and ready-made for you. Let’s start with creating a DITA topic in Adobe FrameMaker 12… First make sure you have selected the Structured interface for your copy of FM. Select DITA > New DITA…
Read MoreHow to Set the General Preference Settings for Adobe FrameMaker
Select Edit > Preferences from Adobe Frame Maker 12 menu bar to display the Preferences dialog box: Here are the explanations of some of the General preferences: Product Interface: select one from the drop-down menu. Monitor Size: select one from the drop-down menu. Automatic Backup on Save: Select this check-box if you would like to save an automatic copy…
Read MoreHow to Copy FrameMaker Table Background Color from One Row to Another – 3 Methods
If you want to copy the background color from one row to another in an Adobe FrameMaker table there are a few methods to do it. METHOD 1 1) Select the row from where you’d like to copy the background color. 2) Right-click and from the pop-up menu select “Custom Ruling and Shading” to display…
Read MoreAdobe FrameMaker 12 Default Document Templates
Adobe FrameMaker has not been a product in the past that offered a wealth of attractive templates to use. For some reason FM developers have not considered the lack of templates a great issue even though it was. I have known quite a few technical writers who kept generating one average looking document after another (or shifted…
Read MoreFrameMaker – RoboHelp Integration – when to preserve modifications to a RoboHelp file?
© Ugur Akinci If you prepare your source files in FrameMaker and then import (or rather, link) them to a RoboHelp project like I do, there is one feature that you should pay attention to. When you bring in a source file and then save it in RH, the application displays the following warning message:…
Read MoreAdobe FrameMaker Pet Peeve: No Way to Edit and Delete Conditional Text Tags Wholesale Across All the Chapters of a Book
© Ugur Akinci Adobe FrameMaker is a great product that I’ve been using for over 15 years now. It’s dependable, scalable, and won’t leave you stranded in the midst of a project by crashing (unless you run out of RAM, which is a possibility when you’re using FrameMaker together with other resource-hungry applications like RoboHelp,…
Read MoreHow to Use Adobe FrameMaker’s Lock File on Network (.lck) Feature Properly
Adobe FrameMaker has a “Lock File on Network” feature that can both be a great lifesaver and also a sheer nuisance, depending on the situation. You can toggle this feature on and off in FrameMaker 11’s Edit > Preferences dialog screen: Once turned on, FrameMaker starts generating a lock (.lck) file that accomplishes two things:…
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