Solving Path Problems with PathChanger

Let’s face it, the FrameMaker documents that we work with rarely stand alone. They often have graphics imported by reference, text insets, and external cross-references, all pointing to files outside of the FrameMaker document. FrameMaker books point to book components that can be located just about anywhere. And when files get moved or renamed, we can end up with a combination of missing graphics, unresolved text insets, unresolved cross-references, or books with missing components.

A FrameMaker document or book stores paths internally for each of these items. PathChanger is a series of ExtendScript scripts that makes it easy to change these paths for a FrameMaker document or book. It has a command for extracting and writing these paths to a simple .csv file. This file can be opened with Excel where you can easily see and edit and change the paths. Once the paths are updated, another command applies them back to the FrameMaker document or book, quickly resolving the missing or unresolved objects. There are additional commands for writing and updating books and their paths to each book component.

Here is how it works for imported graphics, text insets, and external cross-references:

  1. Open the document or book that has paths that need to be updated.
  2. Choose File > Utilities > Write Paths to File. The script will write the path information to a paths.csv file in the same folder as the document or book.
  3. Open the paths.csv file with Excel and edit the Path column in any rows that you want to update. Do not change any of the information in the other columns. You can delete any rows from the csv file that you don’t want to update.
  4. Save the edited Excel file. The file must by saved as a csv file, not as a native xls or xlsx file.
  5. Choose File > Utilities > Update Paths.
  6. Choose the updated csv file that you saved in step 4. PathChanger will open the files listed in the csv file and update the paths.

The process is similar for updating book component paths:

  1. Open the book that has book component paths that need to be updated.
  2. Choose File > Utilities > Write Book Component Paths to File. The script will write the book component paths information to a book_components_paths.csv file and save it in the same folder as the book.
  3. Open the book_components_paths.csv file with Excel and edit the Path column in any rows that you want to update. Do not change any of the information in the other columns. You can delete any rows from the csv file that you don’t want to update.
  4. Save the edited Excel file. The file must by saved as a csv file, not as a native xls or xlsx file.
  5. Choose File > Utilities > Update Book Component Paths.
  6. Choose the updated csv file that you saved in step 4. PathChanger will update the book component paths in the book.

Download the documentation for more details on this powerful new program. Purchase PathChanger today for only $79 at our online store.

Managing Imported Images Solution

I have developed a FrameScript solution for one of the “bottlenecks” submitted to me a couple of weeks ago. A common problem is imported graphics reported as missing when files and folders are moved or renamed. The FrameMaker user actually wanted the ability to rename screenshots and quickly update the references to them without reimporting them. But this solution would normally be used to quickly “repoint” images to new folder paths.

The result is a set of FrameScript scripts called ManageImagePaths. Here is how the solution works:

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Unexpected Absolute Path

File this one under the “learn something new every day” category. This question was posted on one of the Framers lists today:

Our documents have the potential of being generic to be used in multiple manuals. To achieve that, our safety icons are in a common location. The FM files and associated graphics should always be together. When we move the folders to another manual, everything should remain relative. With FM8, writers go to our server and open a file, if the graphics are not positioned correctly, the writer updates the location and FM8 changes the location to absolute. Subsequent files that are opened and saved change the graphic path to absolute and do not ask for the path change. Is there any way to shut this off so that if a file is opened and the relative path is incorrect, that it asks for the path update? The only other way of verifying the path is to do a LOR.

I spoke to the author of the post to make sure that both his FrameMaker file and image were on the same drive; he assured me that they were, so I couldn’t see any reason why the link shouldn’t be relative instead of absolute.

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Managing FrameMaker Images

Last week, I posted a request on the Framers and FrameScript mailing lists, requesting your “favorite” FrameMaker bottlenecks. By bottlenecks, I mean the tedious, error-prone FrameMaker tasks that you have to perform. Or, it could mean a missing feature that you wish FrameMaker had.

I received a hand full of thoughtful responses, but one request I think would be the most useful would be a way to manage FrameMaker images. Here is an excerpt from the email I received:

My bottleneck is graphics — naming graphics consistently, and then finding and updating graphics in a document/book and getting rid of old graphics no longer used. For example, for a current application to which I am writing, I am having to document a Wizard that does function “X”. I am now on my third iteration of this wizard and all of the pages in the wizard have changed again. I need to recapture 10 screenshots and replace them in my current document. I know that I can save the new captures with the same name as the old captures and in the same location because I import by reference but, that’s not really handy for me because the previous captures are named RunWizard_Page1, RunWizard_Page2, etc. and >>NOW<< the Wizard is going to be named the Project Wizard and so I would like to take new captures name them ProjectWizard_Page1, etc. and somehow get these to replace my old captures rather than having to reimport, save them with the new name and/or delete the old named captures. Am I asking for the moon?

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