Maxwell Hoffman recently posted “Top 10 mistakes FM Uses make in content before translation” on his blog (www.tinyurl.com/gpi-fm1). One of the mistakes is having markers within words instead of at the beginning of words. I decided that this could be solved quickly and easily with a FrameScript script. You can download the free script at
http://frameautomation.com/MoveMarkers.zip. It will process all of the markers in the active document or book, allowing you to solve the problem in seconds. Instructions are in the included ReadMe.text file. If you need to purchase FrameScript licenses, please contact me for discount prices. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.
–Rick
Hi Rick,
The link to Max Hoffman’s blog is broken, so I don’t know why having a marker within as opposed to the beginning of a word is a mistake for translation work. But I do know that having a hypertext marker at the beginning of a word is often leads to trouble when converting to PDF. What happens is that the hypertext area in the produced PDF often extends only to the width of the marker itself and not across the whole word or more. To solve this problem, I had a very good script writer (you) write a script for me many years ago to move markers one character to the right.
Hi Baruch, I am sorry about the broken link, which I just fixed. Apparently, the translation software splits the content on either side of the marker into separate words, which, of course, is not good.
Hi Rick,
Thank you so much for posting this script and for fixing the link. Apparently there are some people behind a corporate fire wall who cannot open up tinyurl.com links. For those folks, here is the full URL:
http://www.globalizationpartners.com/blog/top-10-framemaker-mistakes.aspx
… I just posted part 2 of the list at this URL:
http://www.globalizationpartners.com/blog/top-10-framemaker-mistakes—2.aspx
Enjoy!
I move conditional text markers (that are associated with heading text) to the *end* of the headings. In this case, the particular kind of conditional text references internal design document or bug numbers that are the basis for the documentation in the section with the heading.
I often have the conditional text visible when I am editing the document. In that case, the displayed conditional text prepending the headings appears in the structure view and in the list of headings in the cross reference dialog box. It pushes the “real” heading text out beyond the display area in the view or list, and all I can see is the numbers. Putting or moving the markers to the end of the headings fixes the problem.
Wow — I’ve been looking for a script like this for a long time. I’m new to FrameScript (really just started today in earnest). The link to MoveMarkers.zip has, uh, moved. Any chance that it will make a re-appearance?
Cheers,
Ethan
Hi Ethan, I searched high and low for this script, but I can’t seem to find it. Maybe someone that previously downloaded it can provide a copy. I am sorry about that.
Thanks for looking, Rick. Perhaps I will give it a whirl myself.