FrameMaker
Technical Writing – How to Structure FrameMaker Paragraphs While Using the Unstructured Interface
© Ugur Akinci Adobe FrameMaker comes with two powerful built-in interfaces: Structured and Unstructured. You can check out which interface you are using by selecting File > Preferences > General from the main menu and look at the Product Interface drop-down list. Most technical writers use FrameMaker (FM) in the default unstructured mode. That’s fine…
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How to Create a New Paragraph Style in a FrameMaker Document
Introduction FrameMaker Paragraph style is a paragraph formatting style that you can apply to text in FrameMaker. There are four basic paragraph styles: Heading, Body, Footnote, and Header. The purpose of paragraph styles is to make it easier for you to format your text consistently by assigning a specific style to each type of text.…
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Technical Writing – How to Use the Pending Marker in FrameMaker
Introduction FrameMaker (FM) is such a wonderful software to write long and complicated books and documents. In my 20-plus years of experience as a writer and information designer, nothing came 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”…
Read MoreWhat's the Best Way to Learn Structured XML-Based FrameMaker?
© 2009 Ugur Akinci FrameMaker (FM) is a great and popular technical writing tool with XML-based single-sourcing functionality. But its learning curve is rather steep. So how does a technical writer teach him- or herself structured FrameMaker? What’s the best way to learn? Here are my suggestions, based on my ten years of Fortune 500…
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Display Framemaker Conditional Text by Using a Single Text Block
A Framemaker User Case Let’s say as a technical writer you want to display different versions of the same text in a FrameMaker technical document. You’d like to toggle different versions on and off. There is one condition however: you do not want to use multiple copies of the same text block (with perhaps different…
Read MoreWhich Text Editor to Use for Technical Writing – Adobe FrameMaker or Microsoft Word?
© 2008-2010 Ugur Akinci Technical writers have been asking this question to themselves for the good part of the last 15 years. The short answer is this – if you’re writing a short memo, letter, or a short document, MS Word would be just fine. No problem. I use MS Word in that fashion all…
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How to Create a Cross-Reference in FrameMaker
Introduction A cross-reference is often used in technical and scientific publications to indicate related information. The purpose of cross-referencing is to help the reader find related information in the document. The following are some examples of how cross-references can be used in a document: A) To provide information about an author or article that is…
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How to Attach Graphics to FrameMaker Headers
Introduction Imagine you’d like to attach graphics to FrameMaker Headers like when you’d like to have the sweet image of a finch accompanying every section header in your FrameMaker document that has something to do with “Birds.” For example, let’s say you want the readers to see the image of a finch right before every…
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How to Create a FrameMaker Template Master Pages
Introduction A FrameMaker template will make life much easier. Once you create a template, you can import such components like the Master Pages, paragraph and character styles, etc. easily by importing them to your new document. You do not need to create such document settings from scratch every time. How To Create a FrameMaker Template…
Read MoreHow to Use FrameMaker Pending Marker
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…
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