FrameMaker

FrameMaker docs sometimes contain odd color definitions, often the result of importing specific graphic types into the content. Today we discussed strategies for identifying, correcting, and removing these definitions from one or more docs. We also had a general discussion around setting up structured applications for mil-spec (government) structure models, and we discussed options for…

DITA World was a big success, and (with over 5500 registrants) Stefan Gentz and I were certainly worn out after hosting the 3-day event on October 9-11, 2019! We had great sessions on DITA development, including Lightweight DITA and DITA 2.0. We also had lots of information on iiRDS (an Internet of Things standard) and…

Thanks to everyone in my Oct 3, 2019 free office hours session. We had a great lineup of questions from the Tech Comm Tools community, and here’s a recap of what we covered along with a link to the recording: 00:30 Discussion of the (lack of) Object Properties link in the View menu. See my…

A student in my free Intro to FrameMaker 2019 course noticed that the View > Toolbars > Object Properties menu item brings up an interesting toolbar, rather than the Object Properties pod. Here’s a snap of the toolbar that displays using Fm 15.0.4.751: Even more interesting, the toolbar that comes up has a button (circled…

I had a great session with everyone in Thursday’s 9am Pacific office hours session. We didn’t have any RoboHelp users in today’s session, so the majority of topics were FrameMaker. Here’s a quick list of what we discussed. Managing titles in autogenerated FrameMaker files (we used a List of Figures, or LOT in our example)…

Adobe released an update to RoboHelp 2019 today. You can access this free update either by using the Help > Updates command in RoboHelp or by visiting https://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp/downloads.html Here’s what’s been added and fixed: Feature enhancements Use the new Word output feature From RoboHelp, you can now generate output in DOCX format regardless of whether MS…

I had a chance last month to update my FrameMaker – Creating (Unstructured) Content syllabus for the live online class version. I’ve included the main points here, and you can see the longer, up-to-date version on the syllabus page itself. This is the current syllabus for the 2-day live online class, running about every 5-6…

Get my structured FrameMaker workbooks for $42 each. That’s 15% off of the retail price, and even less than you can buy it from Amazon. It’s even a better deal than if you buy it from my Tech Comm Tools seller account, since I can’t cover the tax that Amazon charges on their system. Amazon’s…

Adobe released an update to RoboHelp 2019 today. You can access this free update either by using the Help > Updates command in RoboHelp or by visiting https://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp/downloads.html Here’s what’s been added and fixed: Feature enhancements Use the new frameless output RoboHelp Update 8 introduces frameless output with sleek layout designs and an improved user experience.…

There are two important places to control formatting for your DITA content in FrameMaker 2019: Output formatting (for PDF, HTML5, and other output) is defined within the Publish pod Screen formatting (for displaying content while creating or editing content) is defined in a template, part of a structured application file Changing Output Formatting To edit…

I got this great question from a student: I usually use 12 pt. copy in my projects, but my readers often request to have a 15 pt. version of the same material. I’ve been changing the font size chapter by chapter. Is there is a better way to do this? What about changing from LTR…