FrameMaker 4

[Margaret Gerard <margaret -at- TOSHIBA -dot- TIC -dot- OZ -dot- AU>]

Hi All,

A couple of weeks ago I posted a request for information on
problems etc. that you may have experienced during your
first few months of using Frame4.  There were very few
responses - maybe my query was too broad.

Since then a number of people here have begun using Frame4
and some oddities/queries have come to light:

1.  It seems possible to change a landscape document to
portrait orientation but not portrait to landscape because
there are no "landscape" options in Format:Pages:Normal Page
Layout:Page Size.  Does anyone know of any other way to do
this?

2. Is it possible to make changes to FrameMaker online Help?
I would like to replace information about FrameMaker
templates with information about in-house templates.

3. I was very pleased to see that decimal tabs have been
made available but would want to use this feature to align
a column of figures in a table.  I thought that, while it is
possible to define a tab in para format applied to a table
cell, attempting to instantiate the tab in the cell fails
because pressing the tab key moves the cursor to the next
cell.  HOWEVER (maybe you all know this already) you can put
a tab in a table cell by using esc-tab :>) and therefore make
nicely aligned columns of floating point numbers.

4. Is there any way to scale graphic text?  Using the Scale
option on the drawing palette to scale a selected piece of
text simply moves the text without resizing it.

5. Is anybody using API?

6. Is anybody working with software engineers who use FM for
literate programming or who have set up a method of
extracting code and importing it to Frame documents?

7. I seem to be having difficulties with text flows e.g. I
have a simple document with 1 text box per A4 page.  All text
boxes are in flow A and autoconnect is on.  I select one
text box to change to flow B (using Format:Flow Properties:
Flow Tag).  The Rename Flow dialog box is displayed giving me
the choice between renaming all flows having the same flow
tag as the selected column or the "Current Flow Only".
Selecting the latter causes the flow tag on all columns to be
renamed.  Am I missing something or is this a bug.  It worked
in F3 and I need it!

8. The fact that I can't move around in online Help once I
have a dialogue box open is driving me crazy.  Similarly, if
I have a dialogue box displayed and press the help button in
that box the dialogue box disappears when the Help box is
displayed.  Didn't it occur to anyone at Frame that the user
might want to look at both the dialogue box and the Help info
which explains it?

I'm using F4 on a SparcIPX with Solaris 2.3. Others are using
it on PCs.  I'll seek help from Frame and the news group but
am very interested in your response to the above.

Thanks,
Margaret Gerard    email:margaret -at- toshiba -dot- tic -dot- oz -dot- au
11.25am 23 Feb 94