Stupid FrameMaker tricks

Today I got FrameMaker to pretend it’s a marketing tool and create a document with 2 columns of unequal width, and the ability to spread graphics across both columns. It’s not at all elegant, though, and I wonder if there’s a better way to do it. I’ve trolled thru the user assistance, and it looks as though you can easily create columns of equal widths, then span the graphics across using the “Span all side-heads and columns” attribute in the Paragraph Designer. But if you want unequal columns, you’ve gotta use text flows, and I don’t see an easy way to span graphics over them.

Here’s what I did:

I went onto the master page of a 1-column document (no side-heads) and added 2 new text flows. Be sure to choose “Template for Body Page Text Frame”, name them B and C, specify 1 column each, and don’t select automatically connect to existing text flow (which is not on the same window as the other selections). When you draw the text frames, leave a reasonable gutter, at least .25″.

The result is that you can control the text in the left and right text frames (B and C) by clicking in the columns, and you can add graphics that span both columns by clicking in the gutter. Needless to say, this is very cludgy! So far, I’m controlling the placement of graphics with pilcrows! I don’t think you’d want to do this for anything longer than about 4 or 6 pages, like my brochure. And in a perfect world, I’d get a different tool for this (InDesign?).

Anyone else think it’s ironic that FrameMaker’s UA sucks?

OK, maybe that’s harsh. I don’t really use the documentation all that often, and it’s pretty extensive, so there’s probably lots and lots of good stuff in there. I do have a couple of suggestions, though:

1. When I loaded up, you asked me if I wanted to use the structured version or the unstructured one. So you know which one I use. Quit showing me search results for both. The results list becomes way too long, with lots of redundant entries.

2. I just need a hint sometimes about where to get started, but you always skip the first step in the directions. You do it so consistently, I think it’s part of your style sheet to do so. Here’s today’s example:

I want to use the Text Frame tool, but the help doesn’t tell me where to find it. It’s on the Tools Palette, eh? How do you find that? I finally found it by accident. It’s (interestingly) located on the Graphics menu. Graphics. It’s not the authors’ fault the Text Frame Tool is on the Graphics menu, but I think I would have said something to myself like, “Dang! Nobody’s ever going to find it there, so I’d better deal with that explicity in the help.” (And, no, the hypertext link after that sentence in the screenshot does not help.)

Next up, if anybody can find the Add New Text Frame dialog box, please let me know in the comments. If you follow the directions in this topic or the 2 that show up when you search specifically on “Add New Text Frame dialog”, you get the Create New Text Frame dialog box, and it doesn’t have the same fields as described for ANTF dialog box.

I have spent maybe an hour trying to find tools that I know the specific names of, because a) too many results show up due to my first whinge, above, and b) they’ve skipped the first step in the topics that do seem relevant.

OTOH, you don’t want to clutter up your procedures by prefacing them with 3 or 4  – or even just one – redundant getting started step. I solve this problem by prefacing procedures with a single navigation line that gets them to wherever I think they will be starting from. Something like:

Navigation: Policies > Management > Edit > select the policy you want to edit

(or sometimes Select the policy you want to edit may be #1 in the proc)

I’m interested in hearing about other ways people have handled this.