How to Use FrameMaker Pending Marker

By Ugur Akinci

FrameMaker (FM) is such a wonderful software to write long and complicated books and documents. In my long years of experience as a writer, nothing comes close.

FM has a very powerful built-in marker functionality with which you can mark not only your index words and cross-references but your “pending stuff” as well.

Let’s say you have these paragraphs in your document that you do not quite know how to edit because certain information is missing. So you would like to mark those sections as “pending” and come back and revisit them later on when the missing information is supplied.

If your document is only 10 pages long, obviously it would not be much of a hassle to remember which sections are “pending.”

But how are you going to keep track of the missing items if you have 100 or 200 “pending items” in a 1,000-page user’s guide?

With FM it is very easy. Just simply select the pending sections or click your cursor where you want to enter the marker.

Then, select Insert > Marker from the main menu (or press Esc+s+m) to display the Marker dialog box.

Select the Pending option from the Marker Type drop-down menu.

———————- SIDEBAR: “What if I don’t see a PENDING option?” ———————–

Table of Contents

To Create a New Marker

Then you create one by selecting “Edit” to display the Edit Custom Marker dialog box:

Enter the name “Pending” and click Add. Now you can view and select the “Pending” marker from the Marker Type drop-down list of markers:

—————- END OF SIDEBAR ——————-

After you select the “Pending” type of marker….

Type in anything you like for the “Marker Text” as a reminder. Or, if you’ve selected the whole pending section previously, the selected text will automatically populate the Marker Text field:

Click the Create button, and you are done.

To see all your pending markers in a neat list, select Insert > List of > Markers from the main menu to display the standalone list warning message. Click the Create Standalone button to display the Set Up List of Markers dialog box:

Select Pending from the “Do Not Include” list on the RIGHT and click the Left Arrow to transfer it to the “Include” list on the LEFT. Make sure you also select the Create Hypertext Links check-box.

Click the OK button to create a standalone list and all your pending markers will be listed for you.

NOTE: To create an INDEX of such pending markers, select Insert > Index Of > Markers from the Insert menu and follow the prompts.

To jump directly to a certain marker’s location press Alt + Ctrl. Your cursor will transform into a pointing finger. Click and FM will automatically take you to the exact location of the marker.

Once you edit the pending item, you can delete the pending marker.