Author-it and metadata

Metadata is data about data, or in a technical writing sense, data about information. Author-it has some mechanisms for working with metadata, primarily variables, but how do those transition to the published output?

Author-it is a Component Content Management System based around Microsoft technology that allows teams of authors to collaborate and recombine information to various outputs including help systems, Word documents (and from them PDF) and web knowledge bases. The main window looks like this,

A bit of research this morning and a light-bulb moment allowed me to transfer my variables into both the HTML outputs (easy!) and Microsoft Word (less obvious).

To give a concrete example of what a variable is and how it helps, say for instance I set the Product variable on each of a pair of books containing the same topic to be "banana" and "pear" they can share the same "What is fruit?" topic that mention the product variable,

But sometimes we want to transfer over metadata about the information that doesn't form part of the narrative. How do we get this across to the published output?

Well, in the case of your HTML it's simple and fully documented in the Author-it Knowledge Base, simply edit the HTML template that you are using and add the Author-it namespace and variable name in the template file for instance in the metadata,

<meta name="object_rev" content="<authorit:SYS_OBJECT_REVISION>"/>

Which inserts the object revision into the metadata of each HTML topic.

And in the case of Microsoft Word, after my light-bulb moment, I created a new hidden style called metadata in Microsoft Word and Author-it and included the variables in a new topic called metadata with the Print heading empty which I tagged on the end of my book.

That way, the variables turn up in the Microsoft Word document hidden and ready for post-processing if, for instance, you want to use a macro to move them into the document properties.

If you know a better way of transferring variables into Microsoft Word and PDF output then let me know in the comments. Thanks

Cross about ticks (typographical)

For quite a while now I've been wondering about the common typographic symbol, the tick "✔". It so difficult to type these useful little symbols on any modern electronic device (including phones, tablets and computers) that people are starting to give up on them. In MS Excel, the application where I most often want to use them, I need to select Windings font then select a character code that represents a variant of "u". In UTF-8 they seem to be the symbol &#10004; which is way outside the everyday character set.

I have some questions, if you know answers then please provide them in the comments:

• Is this a local problem, that is, am I being UK centric and does the rest of the world just not care?

• Do you call them "ticks" where you come from or is this the UK English name for them?

• Is this a deliberate deprecation that is, was a decision made somewhere to do away with the little fellas?

• Why is the tick symbol so difficult to include in spreadsheets and documents?

• Are we witnessing the demise of something valuable here?

• And finally, how do I complain and who do I complain to?

If there are any typographers out there with the answer then please let me know.

Thanks.

Creating an information map from multiple word documents

When I'm asked to plan information for a new customer I usually start with a content audit. The quickest and easiest way to understand a suite of MS Word documents (and give yourself a place to keep notes) is by creating a spreadsheet of the documents and tables of contents (TOC).

For a while I've been creating these spreadsheets by laboriously copying each TOC from each Word document (in the latest set, that's 35 documents). This time though, I asked the STC single-sourcing special interest group (sig) for help to automate the process and they gave me a web link that suggests using RD fields to collate all the TOCs into one.

I've written down my process here. It's a bit rough and ready but hopefully it helps. Obviously you'll need to adapt it to your situation but it gives some tips in terms of creating CSV files and using regular expressions for search and replace. If it helps you then please leave a brief comment :)  Thanks.

1. Follow the instructions here to build an RD TOC (thanks Virginia).
2. In MS Word, switch off page numbering and hyperlinks in the TOC so that it is headings only.
3. Copy and paste the TOC into Notepad++
   My TOCs have heading numbering which I can use to create commas for a comma separated value file (CSV). Spreadsheet programs can open CSV files as spreadsheets.
4. To prevent genuine commas breaking the structure, in Notepad++, search and replace commas "," with a unique string like c0mmr4.
5. Press Ctrl+H for search and replace and select Use regular expressions.
6. To extend the heading numbering style with an end period, replace tabs with a period:
      Replace "\t" with "." (no inverted commas).
7. To create the correct number of cells indent, replace numbers followed by period with a comma:
      Replace "[0-9]+\." with ","
8. Save the file.
9. Grab the file and folder name; right-click the Notepad++ tab and select Copy complete path.
10. In MS Excel, File > Open and paste in the file path and name.
11. Search and replace "c0mm4" with ",".
12. Click OK.

That's it. You should have an outlined TOC for your suite of documents. Now you just need to read them :)

DITA without the DTD

A couple of months ago, I led a training course in DITA XML. The first two days were stock slides, concerned with the DTDs, conref and conkeyref mechanism, then, the third day, the one I wrote, was entirely about the DITA philosophy, the semantic nature of the DTDs, progressive disclosure and writing great short descriptions (shortdescs).

Rupert the bear providing progressive disclosure

More recently, I've been asked to use Adobe Technical Communications Suite (TCS 3.5) to create content. As for previous assignments, the current documentation is unstructured, does not reuse content, and the help and PDFs are not  single-sourced. That is, the help systems are entirely separate from the PDF and content is copied between the two. I'm assuming this is reasonably common. The team members are all professional writers of a certain quality but, outside of word choice and a few style guide rules, the content varies quite considerably in approach and overall style.

For my part, and probably from my long term exposure to DITA XML, I have adopted many of the writing philosophies that it provides and I work them into my normal output. For instance, progressive disclosure. If I am writing an introduction in a chapter, I don't write, "This chapter tells you about..." and list the subjects, I write a summary that includes high level facts from the subject matter and let the reader make the assumption that this is the subject of the chapter.

Then it hit me, why not formally introduce the writing rules of progressive disclosure and short descriptions into the current writing guide. Why not aim for a DITA-like layout in tasks? Why not, as a team, plan the information set with Task, Concept and Reference topics as if we were using DITA. The double-benefit of this approach is that it results in more consistent documentation, and, should the decision be made in the future to move to DITA XML, we have topics that are ready for the transition.

Comparing Snagit with Microsoft Clip Organiser and Snipping Tool

I'll be honest. I've never purchased a license for TechSmith Snagit. In earlier versions of Windows, I've always used ALT+PrtScn and Windows Paint. However, the other authors here use Snagit and expect me to use it too, and, I'm a big fan of TechSmith Corporation. I use Camtasia, Jing and Morae when I can and they are excellent tools. For me, these tools set the bar in usability.

So, I like Snagit because it is shiney and easy to use. But, can I just use Windows Clip Organizer and Snipping Tool to replace the ever-so-useful Snagit? While the snipping tool allows you to save as PNG, it doesn't integrate at all with the Clip Organizer except through copy and paste.

The first hurdle with Microsoft Clip Organizer is that it doesn't offer a Save As option. In fact, it doesn't offer Save at all. However, with a little investigation, I discovered that it automatically stores images in a folder called Microsoft Clip Organizer in My Pictures.

But, these are uncompressed bitmap files which are unsuitable for most uses. Ideally for my needs, they need to be PNG files. If I right-click on them, guess which application presents a "convert" option - Snagit of course.

The next hurdle is that the Clipping Tool only offers free-form, rectangular, window, or full screen clips – only a slight improvement on ALT+PrtScn. Snagit offers a whole bunch of different capture options including special features like scrolling through web pages and list boxes. Without Snagit, I'm stuck with connecting these together in Paint.net.

Finally, Snagit stores all the images you have previously captured in a database that displays across the bottom of the Snagit Editor. That's exactly what Microsoft Clip Organizer does too. It's main feature in fact. You can assign keywords/tags and a captions but, and it is a big BUT, you can't decide the filename or format and so you can't recognize them outside clip editor.

So, I'll stop there. I think Microsoft Clip Organizer and Snipping Tool fail when compared with Snagit in the following important ways:

• From Snipping Tool, you don't get an automatic database of previous clips
• From Snipping Tool, the editing and highlighting is unconstrained and scruffy
• The Snipping Tool is not integrated with Clip Organizer
• From Clip Organizer, you can't save files as a different type or rename them
• From Clip Organizer, you can't edit files or launch their default editor

A little more integration between the two tools would be a very good thing but, for now, I think that Snagit is an investment worth making.

Report from 5th March event, Self-service support starts in the UI

This was a joint event between the ISTC, Northern User Experience, and the Manchester Metropolitan University usability lab.
Rachel Potts of 3di Usability described findings and techniques she has used to improve the user experience of software. Techniques that apply equally whether you approach software from a documentation or user experience (UX) design point of view. Improvements in each of the five areas she looked at were backed up by solid evidence either from a usability lab or through technical support statistics. Of the five areas, the two that stood out to me were the focus on clear error messages and the idea that you should break the rules. After all, when are customers most likely to call Tech support? When they receive an error. A clear message can go a long way to helping them serve themselves. As for breaking the rules, users have become jaded over the years and have lost trust in standard help mechanisms, so the idea here is, if you are providing content that is truely useful, you now need to make it stand out in some way, perhaps by glowing or appearing in the UI instead of the help.
All in all, the evening was a resounding success for all parties. 3di who provided the refreshments, the ISTC who were exposed to several potential new members, MMU usability lab who met some of the movers and shakers from UX in the north of England, and myself who will be taking this experience back to my new challenge at AppSense and putting it into practice.
Thank you Rachel

US and UK Spoken English

Writing technical information in US English is one thing. However, over the past few days, Baxter, a hula-hooping expert from North Carolina, USA, has been staying with my family.

This is Baxter:



This led me to recite my two favourite observations about the difference between UK and US spoken language:

Communication can be one way at times
Because films and media generally flow from the US to the UK but not back the other way, North Americans generally do not understand our idioms although we generally understand theirs. This can lead to blank stares during normal conversations or snorts and gurgles as they try to get their head around our anglicisms.

The richest field for alternative words is the automobile, sorry, car.
Starting from the front we need to translate:
Bumper  > Fender
Headlamps > Headlights
Bonnet > Hood
Windscreen > Windshield
Gear stick > Stick shift
Boot > Trunk
Rear lights > Tail lights
Exhaust pipe > Tail pipe

If you have any more for my collection then do let me know.

I'll finish with one final anecdote:
A few years ago I was getting out of the car with my Texan friend who shrieked with delight when I exclaimed, "Oh no, I've trodden on a boiled sweet" as I got out. She just didn't know what I meant. It turns out that, actually, I'd "stepped in a candy".

Second guessing what the user needs

I often say that my job is to be an advocate for the user within an organization. I shouldn't just document the tasks that the user wants to achieve, I should also push back to the development team to explain when the software presents barriers to achieving tasks.

However, how do we know what real users are trying to achieve with the software? We can make a best guess based on previous experience but, new features are new features and don't necessarily have a precedent. What then?

I've heard it said several times recently that we should be writing the bulk of the user documentation after the product is released and that we should base the tasks we document on needs identified from technical support calls.

Indeed, several large companies are already doing this.

Skype online help

This has parallels with the release early and release often of Agile and Scrum software development where features bubble to the top of a list. I get the feeling that post-release documentation will be the hot topic of 2012.

Nobody's talking about it

The circles I move in so far aren't considering the implication of the movement of English language technical communications to lower-cost India. However, in the UK there has been a dip in contract rates and writing rates have remained more or less static for perhaps 10 years.

The list of panelists from the tcworld India 2012 conference makes interesting reading:

1. Ken Chu, Senior Director of Information Development, Server Technologies, Oracle Corporation, USA
2. Suneeta Aggarwal, Director of Technical Publications at TIBCO Software Inc, USA
3. Sonali Natarajan, Director of Documentation, Cisco Corporation, USA

So Oracle, TIBCO and Cisco now write their content in India do they?

I read a while back that by working with India from the UK, both economies would grow. If that is true, what we need to do, rather than burying our heads in the sand, is embrace that idea and start working together.

For many businesses in the UK, success can only come by working in the team with the developers and engineer subject matter experts (SME). Writing requires understanding and expertise but, which bits of the process could you share with a lower cost colleague? How does your organization aid you in forming those relationships? It's time to start thinking about these issues.

Test Driving the Componize DITA XML Solution

Componize kindly granted me a trial of their Componize Cloud-based system. They sent me a very nice Getting Started email and a password reset.

The Componize user guide, Getting Started topic (requires trial login) looks like the Eclipse Help output from the DITA OpenToolkit. The user guide didn't immediately say how to check-out, modify and check-in content but that's OK because, once I located the DITAmap and topics, I could easily click the "Edit online with DITA Storm button" to open it in a new browser tab.

The following sections describe my first attempts to use Componize with DITA XML content.

First: Change some content

1. Click the My Home link at the top left.
2. In the Alfresco Explorer, drill down to locate the content.





3. Click the Edit Online with DITA Storm button.
4. Make some changes and click Save.

But that isn't really appropriate for a multi-user environment. What we really need to do is check-out, change and check-in a file.

To check-out, change and check-in a topic:

1. From the drop-down, select Check Out, select a location for the working copy, and click Check Out.
2. This creates a working copy.



3. Edit the working copy and click the Check In icon.

Second: Publish

1. In the Alfresco Explorer, navigate to the DITAmap.
2. Click the drop-down and select Run Output Processing.





3. Select the output format (pipeline) you want, and click Add to List.
4. At the top right, click OK.

The screen refreshes surprisingly quickly to show Log files for <ditamap> with the result clearly listed under Results Document with the correct time and date.

In the trial the PDF displays using the default DITA OpenToolkit appearance with my changes included.

My Author-it Elevator Pitch

When you choose Author-it you are choosing

• Single Sourcing,
• Reusable content,
• Modular Writing,
• Assembled Documents
• and Content Management.

Why does Single Sourcing make sense?

Well, Author-it publishes to Print, Web, and Help formats and, given time and budget, you can customize anything and everything you want about those outputs. But what it means on the ground is that you are not writing in any one of those outputs using specific tools and creating independent formatting. In the old world order you’d use Framemaker for print, Robohelp for help, and Dreamweaver for online. You’d spend time formatting and carefully laying out the content in each of those tools. Estimates vary but authors can burn between 40% and 70% of their time making changes to the pagination and formatting of their documents. With single-sourcing that effort is made once up-front. The authors simply need to apply the styles to their content and the formatting looks after itself when you publish - BANG - you’ve now got half the work to do.

Why reuse content?

Look at it like a translation job. You might think that translation at 7 pence per word is expensive. How often do you stop to think what it costs to write the content in the first place. Can you put a value on that, per word? When you include all the research, reviews, editing, and updating, all the emails and coffee breaks, my back of an envelope calculation gives (100 page manual = £7000, Average 200 words per page, 7000p/200 =) about 35p per word. I’ll leave you to join the dots on this one... let’s just say that reusing chunks of text makes sound economic sense and with Author-it it is SO easy, particularly if you invest in Author-it Xtend which brings reuse to the paragraph level and creates consistency on a whole new level.

Why write in a modular style?

A friend of mine, John (@jashw0rth), hit the nail on the head for this one. From being tiny, we’ve been raised with books. The thing about a book is that it reveals information bit by bit. When, as an adult, you start reading manuals in order to do your job, if the information you need isn’t on the page you’re reading, you’ll trust it to be somewhere in the manual. You might keep reading or use the index or table of contents to locate it (or for online manuals, search the PDF). You don’t notice the extra effort because you’re conditioned to it. Now, if you practice chunking information into topic based modular documents you’ll quickly get into the habit of making sure all of the appropriate context is present in the topic or chunk and of providing links to the information that isn’t immediately available. When you then publish those topics to a print format it just makes a noticeably better document. The information you need is there when you need it. You no longer need to trust it will be there somewhere. The message is that we need modular writing for online help and hyperlinked formats but it even makes better printed documents.

What are assembled documents?

Once you have your information in topics you can quickly and easily, drag and drop topics to rearrange them into books for help systems, books for manuals, books aimed at different audiences or products. Assembled documents are another great way of reuse. You can reuse the same content across products or product versions without doing additional writing.. remember that figure of 35p per word?

What about content management?

I’m not going to pretend that all of this comes without a cost. You’ve got to learn a tool. You need to move your existing content into the new tool. You have processes; what will become of them? Author-it is a content management solution. It does help you manage your content. You can search for any text, title, release state. You can search by folder or by book. You can search and replace text in the results (I’m not sure if that’s a new feature but it is very cool). You can use the release states to mirror your processes and formally lock topics that are being reviewed or have been approved. You have that level of control. You can turn on history and store every change that’s ever made to an object, and revert them when you need to.

All of the management, security, and tracking tools that you get with a CMS like Author-it just aren’t available if you’re using file store or code control. And don’t worry, if you’re a small team or excessively paranoid, you can turn them all off... Or on as you prefer.

You already manage your content, why not use a modern tool that is designed for the job to help you?

Did I mention collaboration? 

No, but I’ll end there, thanks for giving me your eyes.

So that’s it, just to recap, Author-it offers;

• Single Sourcing,
• Reusable content,
• Modular Writing,
• Assembled Documents,
• Content Management,
• And collaboration.

Simplifying PDF Document Publishing in the DITA OpenToolkit

In a recent post on the Yahoo DITA Users Group, Mark Griffin described one of "the main things that people want to do and find difficult" as "adjusting the cover page for PDF output" and, as I was working on exactly that, I thought I'd jot down a few notes to help others.

I was working in the DITA OpenToolkit (DITA-OT) version 1.5.3 on Windows 7.

The idea here is to let you get usable output from the DITA OpenToolkit in a little under an hour. Let me know in the comments if you have any difficulties. The ethos of PDF customization is that you should override the configuration files by creating custom files. This is not always possible. In particular I found that front-matter_1.0.xsl cannot be moved or overridden.

As a minimum, I recommend you use a good text editor like Notepad++.

Downloading the toolkit
 

First, download the latest DITA-OT file from sourceforge and unzip it to the root of your data drive.

Testing it works with a publish
 

Note: From here on, all the file and folder paths I use are relative to the inside of the DITA-OT folder.

Make sure the DITA-OT is working the way we need it:

1. Double-click startcmd.bat.
2. Change directory, type cd samples\ant_sample
3. Type ant -f sample_pdf.xml
4. Wait for the processing to finish then, in Windows Explorer, navigate to samples\ant_sample\out\samples\pdf.
5. Open file hierarchy.pdf to view the result.

Leave the command prompt open so that you can test your changes as you make them.

Simplifying headers and footers
 

I simplified the headers and footers so that they contained only the product name at the top and page number at the bottom (except the cover). To add the product name to the header:

1. Copy en.xml from demo\fo\cfg\common\vars to demo\fo\Customization\common\vars

There is no need to update catalog.xml for custom vars. They are used automatically.


2. Define the variable Product Name in en.xml

 <variable id="Product Name">MyProduct Version 8</variable>


3. In en.xml, add page numbers to all the footer definitions (search for "footer")
   
   <variable id="Body odd footer"><param ref-name="pagenum"/></variable>
    
4. Still in en.xml, simplify the header variables to just show the product name variable
   
   For example, from:
   
   <variable id="Body odd header"><param ref-name="prodname"/>&#xA0;|&#xA0;<param ref-name="heading"/>&#xA0;|&#xA0;<param ref-name="pagenum"/></variable>
   
   To:
   
   <variable id="Body odd header"><param ref-name="prodname"/></variable>
   
   Also, the headers and footers were too close to the edge of the page.
    
5. Copy all the definitions for header and footer positioning from demo\fo\cfg\fo\attrs\static-content-attr.xsl to demo\fo\Customization\fo\attrs\custom.xsl. These appear as follows:
   
   <xsl:attribute-set name="__body__first__header">
          <xsl:attribute name="text-align">right</xsl:attribute>
          <xsl:attribute name="margin-right">10pt</xsl:attribute>
          <xsl:attribute name="margin-top">10pt</xsl:attribute>
   </xsl:attribute-set>
   
   And set all the margins (I used search and replace):
   
   
   • "margin-left">57pt 
   • "margin-right">57pt 
   • "margin-bottom">35pt 
   • "margin-top">35pt
   
   
6. In order to get the publishing to use the custom.xsl file, enable it in demo/fo/Customization/catalog.xml by removing the commenting around the following line:
   
   <uri name="cfg:fo/attrs/custom.xsl" uri="fo/attrs/custom.xsl"/>
   
   I then needed to remodel the header and footer to just show the product name at the top, and the page number at the bottom.
   
   
7. Publish again to check it worked.
   
   The page numbers and product name should appear on every page except the cover and be further from the edge.

Adjusting the page size
 

I needed A4 paper which is 210mm x 297mm, the DITA-OT default is US Letter size.

To change the paper size:

1. Copy the global variables for page and margin from demo\fo\cfg\fo\attrs\basic-settings.xsl to demo\fo\Customization\fo\attrs\custom.xsl and change to the following:
   
   
   <xsl:variable name="page-width">210mm</xsl:variable> 
   <xsl:variable name="page-height">297mm</xsl:variable>
   
   
2. Publish again to check it worked.

Setting the default font
 

I also needed to make the default font Sans Serif.

To change the default font:

1. Copy attribute-set __fo__root from demo\fo\cfg\fo\attrs\commons-attr.xsl to demo\fo\Customization\fo\attrs\custom.xsl.
2. Change font from "Serif" to "Sans".
3. Publish again to check it worked.

A simple front page
 

I made a simple front page with a logo at the top-right, product name (set in the map @product attribute), map title, and revision (set in the map @rev attribute). The blocks just stack and fill the flow from the top down. Measurements are defined in the attribute sets: __frontmatter__product, __frontmatter__title, and __frontmatter__rev.

Add the following blocks which include the image block in demo\fo\xsl\fo\front-matter_1.0.xsl. They need to go inside template name="createFrontMatter_1.0", in the xsl-region-body flow. They include 2 new blocks before the title and 1 after as follows:


<!-- RP added: frontmatter logo -->
<fo:block margin-left="5.2in">
<fo:external-graphic src="url(Customization/OpenTopic/common/artwork/logo.png)"/>
</fo:block>
<!-- RP added: set the product -->
<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="__frontmatter__product">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="//*[contains(@class, ' map/map ')]/@product">
<xsl:value-of select="//*[contains(@class, ' map/map ')]/@product"/>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:text>Product attribute not set for map</xsl:text>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</fo:block>
<!-- set the title --> (this exists unchanged)
<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="__frontmatter__title">
...
...
...
</fo:block>
<!-- RP added: set the revision -->
<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="__frontmatter__rev">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="//*[contains(@class, ' map/map ')]/@rev">
<xsl:value-of select="//*[contains(@class, ' map/map ')]/@rev"/>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:text>Revision attribute not set for map</xsl:text>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</fo:block>


Place your logo.png file in folder demo\fo\Customization\common\artwork folder.

Create the attribute sets. Copy the __frontmatter__title block attribute-set from demo\fo\cfg\fo\attrs\front-matter-attr.xsl to demo\fo\Customization\fo\attrs\custom.xsl and duplicate it for __frontmatter__product and __frontmatter__rev. I left aligned __frontmatter then adjusted the vertical spacing as follows:


<!-- front-matter-attr.xsl modifications -->
    <xsl:attribute-set name="__frontmatter">
        <xsl:attribute name="text-align">left</xsl:attribute>
    </xsl:attribute-set>
 
    <xsl:attribute-set name="__frontmatter__product">
        <xsl:attribute name="margin-top">30mm</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:attribute name="font-family">Sans</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:attribute name="font-size">18pt</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:attribute name="font-weight">normal</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:attribute name="line-height">140%</xsl:attribute>
    </xsl:attribute-set>
 
    <xsl:attribute-set name="__frontmatter__title">
        <xsl:attribute name="margin-top">45mm</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:attribute name="font-family">Serif</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:attribute name="font-size">28pt</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:attribute name="font-weight">bold</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:attribute name="line-height">140%</xsl:attribute>
    </xsl:attribute-set>
 
    <xsl:attribute-set name="__frontmatter__rev">
        <xsl:attribute name="margin-top">128mm</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:attribute name="font-family">Sans</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:attribute name="font-size">10pt</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:attribute name="font-weight">normal</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:attribute name="line-height">140%</xsl:attribute>
    </xsl:attribute-set>

Finally, publish again.

Doom and Gloom in the UK

We need to get the UK economy growing again. At the moment, for every £4 the government receives in revenue, it is still spending £5. What can we do to reduce our public deficit? The government is putting serious money behind building the private sector but how should we spend it? What are our assets?

Well, one of our assets is the English language.

Businesses need to focus on clear communications with their customers for their business or service. Fortunately, we're in the best place on earth to do that.

I'm suggesting that we all investigate grants and loans to increase the accuracy, improve the effectiveness, and reduce the volume of our communications. This should be a fundamental step for any business in order to out-compete our overseas competitors and to correctly promote our products and services on the world stage.

Framemaker 7.2 on Windows 7

The other day I was installing Framemaker 7.2 and when I mentioned Windows 7 in the office there was an intake of breath... I can't remember who from.

I've been working with Framemaker 7.2 for about 1 week, and although it should run fairly smoothly on a new-ish laptop, because it was developed for Windows 2000, it didn't. Just typing held the processor at 100% and letters were appearing seconds after I typed them.

I tried the Windows 7 compatibility wizard but it was hopeless.

To fix Framemaker 7.2 compatibility options for Windows 7

1. In Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Framemaker 7.2.
2. Right-click Framemaker.exe and select Properties from the shortcut menu.
3. Click the Compatibility tab.
   
4. Click Change settings for all users.
5. Click Disable display scaling on high dpi settings.
   
6. Click OK.

My hypothesis is, that I have a high dpi screen resolution, which on Windows XP meant that everything was tiny. I have set Windows 7 screen resolution settings to scale text and other items to 125%, making them more readable. However, Framemaker probably doesn't use the Windows rendering and so would be presenting more of a bitmap based approach to this rescaling function. If that is the case then adding each letter or chunk of text might mean  redrawing the whole page which would obviously take far more processor time. By disabling the display scaling for Framemaker everything starts to work normally.