RE: Can anybody tell me how, in FrameMaker, to easily find empty paragraphs?

["Joe Malin" <jmalin -at- tuvox -dot- com>]

Like the good SW engineer I am, I did some testing on this.

I surmised, first, that Guy had first imported the MS Word into FM.
"How?" I asked myself. Not knowing, I tested several methods.

I first opened a sample Word doc, added some blank paragraphs, selected
the text, copied it, and pasted it into FM 7.1, using a blank document
as a template.

Find/Replace worked in all cases of Paste or Paste Special...

I then did what I would have done myself. I saved the Word doc as RTF,
then opened it in FM using RTF 1.6 importer. In this case, Find/Replace
only worked if the "blank" line contained a paragraph marker!

I therefore had to conclude that the so-called "blank" line contained
something. An easy way to test this in FM is to use the arrow keys on
the keyboard to move the cursor. Doing this, I discovered that a Right
Arrow in one of the "apparently" blank lines does *not* immediately move
the cursor to the next line.

As a control, I added a blank line to the FM document by pressing the
return key. In this blank line, pressing Right Arrow moves immediately
to the next line. Not coincidentally, Find/Replace *does* pick up this
line.

So, Guy, I conclude that your import screwed you. The apparently blank
lines contain something!

I didn't stop there. I looked at the contents of both the RTF and the
resulting FM file. Neither are easy to read. The RTF seems to mark the
paragraphs ok, but some of them are followed by something that looks
like a paragraph definition.

The FM is suspicious. Offending para lines have different patterns than
"working" para lines. I have no idea why. I suspect the RTF to FM
converter in FM as a culprit.

My suggestion is to eliminate blank para marks and do other cleanup
stuff in *Word*, and *then* convert to FM.


Joe Malin
Technical Writer
(408)625-1623
jmalin -at- tuvox -dot- com 
www.tuvox.com
The views expressed in this document are those of the sender, and do not
necessarily reflect those of TuVox, Inc.	

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+jmalin=tuvox -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+jmalin=tuvox -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf
Of Guy K. Haas
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 3:58 PM
To: Laura Lemay
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Can anybody tell me how, in FrameMaker, to easily find
empty paragraphs?

Thanks, LL, but that has the same effect that \P\p had for me: none.

Actually, that's not quite true.  Both are finding paragraphs containing
only a table, but not what appears on my screen as a line containing
only a paragraph mark.

--Guy

Laura Lemay wrote:
> Check "Use Wildcards," and then use the pattern "^$"  minus the 
> quotes.  This is the regular expression equivalent of \P\p.
> 
> Laura
> 
> 
> On 1/20/06, Guy K. Haas <guy -at- hiskeyboard -dot- com> wrote:
>> I'm porting material from MS Word to FrameMaker 7, and the perpetr...
>> er, original authors used empty paras for white space.  I'd like to 
>> find and delete them expeditiously.
>>
>> Is there a handy short way to do a Find for empties?
>>
>> Seems like a search for \P\p (begin para, end para) should do it, but

>> seems not to.
>>
>> Tried copying an empty to the clipboard and doing a find for "Text & 
>> Character Formats on Clipboard" and got nothing.
> 
> 
> 
> --
>
*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^
> Laura Lemay     Killer of Trees     lemay % lne.com    lemay %
gmail.com
> http://www.lauralemay.com
http://blog.lauralemay.com
> *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^
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