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:

• You run a “Collect Image Data” command that prompts you for the documents you want to process. You can collect image data from a single document, book, or all of the documents in a folder (and optional subfolders). The result is a single .csv file containing all of the imported image data.

• You open the .csv file in Excel, where the image data is listed in columns. The columns include the document name, the page where the image is located and the folder and file names of the images. Columns can be rearranged and rows can be sorted so you can easily find and edit the appropriate data. You can update folder and file names in any of the rows.
• After the data is edited, you run the “Update Image Paths” command, which will prompt you for the edited Excel spreadsheet. The script quickly updates all of the image paths in the appropriate FrameMaker documents. Only images that you changed are updated. The script can update hundreds of FrameMaker documents in seconds.

The cost for the complete solution is $95, including the FrameScript source code and documentation. To purchase the scripts, please contact rick@frameexpert.com.

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.

So I set up this test to try to duplicate his problem. I created a FrameMaker file here

E:\Test1\Test2\Test3\DeleteMe.fm

with a link to this graphic

E:\Graphics\GPL_Tick.eps

I closed the FrameMaker file and copied it to various locations on the E drive. To my surprise, no matter where I copied the FrameMaker file, it still pointed to the absolute path of the image. I had expected it try to maintain a relative path, for example

..\..\..\Graphics\GPL_Tick.eps

Apparently, if FrameMaker has to reach to the root of the drive to build or update its link to the image, it automatically creates an absolute path instead of a relative path. The way to ensure a relative path is to make sure that there is at least one common folder below the root. For example, if I use these paths

E:\Docs\Test1\Test2\Test3\DeleteMe.fm

E:\Docs\Graphics\GPL_Tick.eps

then I get the relative path (..\..\..\Graphics\GPL_Tick.eps) that I expect.

–Rick

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?

It occurred to me that this task might be best handled outside of FrameMaker and in an Excel spreadsheet. Here are the advantages I see:

1. You can quickly extract and manage a large amount of image data by going from FrameMaker to Excel via FrameScript.

2. You can use Excel’s tools to quickly analyze the image data by sorting, rearranging columns, etc.

3. You can use Excel’s find/replace function to quickly change the image data you want. The image file and path could be listed in separate columns in the spreadsheet, making it easier (and safer) to do find/replace on just folders or file names.

4. You can extract image data from multiple books and combine them into a single spreadsheet and update hundreds of common images at once.

This would basically be done with two FrameScript scripts: the first would extract the data into a .CSV file, which can be opened in Excel. The second script would update the image paths in the FrameMaker documents from the content of the Excel file. Both scripts would run in seconds, even with large amounts of image data.

What do you think? If this solution appeals to you, or you have any suggestions for making it better, I would love to hear from you.

–Rick