Technicalities - the online newsletter for STC RMC

December 2004/January 2005

Volume 45, Number 3

.pdf Version

Masthead

Tips from the Trenches

by Deb Lockwood

A technical-guru friend asked me recently whether I would like to use some of his material in this column. Being the ever-practical person that I am, my response was: "Uh, yeah!" So, my next few articles will contain tips that I have gleaned from practical experience and mostly from my guru friend (thanks, Rick). Each article will cover tips about various software applications. In this issue, we will look at some tips for Adobe FrameMaker.

Shortcuts

Following is a list of shortcuts you can use to perform common functions in FrameMaker:

To Do this	Press This key
Apply a paragraph tag	F9
Apply a character tag	F8
Add a new table row below the current row	CTRL+ENTER
Zoom to 100%	ESC z z
Open the Cross-Reference dialog box	ESC s c
Open the Variables dialog box "As is"	ESC s v
Use tabs within a table window	ESC+TAB
Shrink wrap a graphic	ESC m p
Select the next character	ESC h c
Select the next word	ESC h w
Select the current line	ESC h l
Select the current sentence	ESC h s
Select the current paragraph	ESC h p
Change dialog box settings to "As Is"	CTRL+F8
Switch to the next open window	CTRL+TAB
Open the Hypertext dialog box	ESC s h

Copy Special

Use the Copy Special commands on the Edit menu to speed up your work. The Copy Special command has the following options:

Paragraph Format
Character Format
Conditional Text Settings
Table Column Width

After you use Copy Special, do a regular paste to paste the settings you want.

Paste Special

You can also use the Paste Special commands on the Edit menu to speed up your work. Use the Paste Special command to paste special items in different formats. For example, use Paste Special to paste paragraphs you have copied from Microsoft Word. You can then edit the paragraphs in FrameMaker, which you can't do if you did a regular paste with the paragraph.

Copy text in Word.
In FrameMaker, select Edit | Paste Special.
Select Rich Text Format or Text.
Click Ok.

Advanced Find/Change

You can use the Find/Change dialog box to find and replace more than text. Try using it for the following items:

Text
Character Format
Paragraph Tag
Character Tag
Any Marker
Marker of Type
Marker Text
Any Cross-Reference
Cross-Reference of Format
Unresolved Cross-Reference
Any Text Inset
Unresolved Text Inset
Any Publisher
Any Variable
Variable of Name
Anchored Frame
Footnote
Any Table
Table Tag
Conditional Text
Automatic Hyphen
Text & Character Formats on Clipboard

In the Find/Change dialog box, you can use the Change pull-down menu to change items in the following ways:

To Text
To Character Format
By Pasting

Bold/Italics

Always use character tags for bold and italics. When you use the bold and italics buttons on the toolbar, the character settings aren't always visible in the PDF files.

Contributor: Rick A. Henkel, http://frameuser.blogspot.com/.

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