Setting up a cover page

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alex
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Setting up a cover page

Post by alex »

My WebHelp is in decent shape, but I'm hitting some walls trying to create a doc that looks similar to the Getting Started Guide PDF (on the Flare help menu) using the FrameMaker target. My Contents and Index proxy pages work, but I can't seem to get the settings right for my Cover page.

I set up a Master Page with the Manual Title on the First Page, the Company Name as a footer on the First Page, and a Copyright notice snippet in the Footer (I tried it on the Odd Page, then the Even Page, but there's a problem). I then created a topic for the Cover in my TOC and specified the Cover Master Page in the section properties.

When I publish to FrameMaker, the Manual Title and Company Name show up on the first page of the first Frame file in the book, but I lose a horizontal line I included under the Manual Title and the Copyright notice does not show up on the page following the Cover as I had hoped.

Can anyone tell me how I should be doing this?
alex
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Post by alex »

Going once, going twice, has *anyone* successfully created front matter in Flare that translates well to Frame? Hoping to hear from you! Thanks.
alex
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Post by alex »

Update - I've gotten the front matter issues sorted, but the horizontal line still won't appear. Actually, no lines show up in any of my FrameMaker files. Has anyone gotten lines to print in Frame? Is this a bug or am I missing something? Thanks!
LTinker68
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Post by LTinker68 »

I don't have FrameMaker, so I can't test anything, just make suggestions. How did you create the horizontal line? Did you use the underline tag (<u>), or did you insert a horizontal rule, or did you add a border property to one of your styles?
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Lisa
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alex
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Post by alex »

Hello - thanks for the response. I have tried all of the above. Underlining text works, but I want a line that spans the page width, not just the text. I'm faking it for the time being with a 6px .gif, but I'd prefer to have Frame recognize the border style.

This is the code I used to create a bottom border using a style:

Code: Select all

{
  font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif;
  font-size: 24px;
  border-bottom: solid 10px #aaaaaa;
}  
I tested one of the sample master pages in Flare that uses lines to separate the header/footer text from the body, and the lines do come through. They are table borders.

I've set the properties in both the (default) and print Media. I'm really hoping it's that I'm missing something somewhere. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
alex
LTinker68
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Post by LTinker68 »

Your code looks fine, so let's try something else. Do it in reverse... Create a FrameMaker file with the text and lines that you want and save the file. Create a new project in Flare and import the FrameMaker page. Allow Flare to import the styles, too (I'm assuming the import has that feature). When the import is done, open the stylesheet with the Internal Text Editor and see what styles it added. Copy those styles to a Notepad file (or clipboard), open the original Flare project, and try adding the styles to the stylesheet. I'm assuming it'll just be a custom paragraph style, in which case you just need to specify the style for the paragraph.
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Lisa
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alex
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Post by alex »

Great thinking! Thanks very much for your help.

I followed your suggestion using a FrameMaker file containing a variety of styles (including an underlined heading style), and the result was that the border style was not imported. The only border information that wasn't lost in translation? Tables!

I'll try a few more tests as time permits. Anyone else using FrameMaker & Flare who could test this?

Thanks,
alex

p.s. Along the same, er, lines... http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewtopic.php?t=2204
alex
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Post by alex »

Update: After jumping through many hoops, I still haven't had any luck getting style-based lines to appear in Frame output. My workaround continues to be to use an image file of a line.

Still wondering if anyone has been able to get this to work (or who has had the same problem)... It would be cool if there were some tricked-out sample Flare-Frame examples & templates in the next Flare update :wink:
pdenchfield
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Bottom border disappearing in FrameMaker output

Post by pdenchfield »

I will chime in here. Yes, I'm also seeing the bottom border disappear from my paragraphs when I output to FrameMaker. I'm troubleshooting now, but I don't feel that comfortable after reading your many posts since Nov/Dec last year with still no resolution! If I find any solution, I'll post it here.

--Pamela Denchfield
Laurah
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Post by Laurah »

I've also noticed that if you set a paragraph style to include borders (or background colour/image, for that matter), it does not get converted into Frame. I wonder if this is a feature of Flare, or of Frame?

Laura H
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Re: Line

Post by SteveS »

alex wrote:Update: After jumping through many hoops, I still haven't had any luck getting style-based lines to appear in Frame output. My workaround continues to be to use an image file of a line.
Just noticed this post - I don't use FM so generally only glance at FM threads.

If you export from Flare to Word the resulting document doesn't have lines generated using <HR> either. I think I'll report it as a bug and suggest anyone else who uses <hr> to print does so as well. The URL is http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx
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zipededoo
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also having no borders

Post by zipededoo »

I'll chime in here.

No borders appear for any elements apart from tables for me. I'd like to add borders in my print docs (Frame or Word, don't care, but I'm using Frame at the moment) around things like Code Examples or Notes. A border around the text, and filled with a light background color.

I've tried:
P styles with borders and background on
P's within DIV elements with borders and background defined in the DIV
P's within single celled tables with borders and background defined in the TD

All render OK to the screen, but in print output the borders and backgrounds all disappear, except when using a single celled table.

I also tried adding borders to IMG tags, but they also don't appear.

Any fix for this yet?

Rob
jbarwick
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Re: Setting up a cover page

Post by jbarwick »

I too would like to have borders on things other than tables!

How do I do this in FrameMaker?

I create a master page that looks like this:

<table class="pagetable" border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr>
<td class="pageborder"><MadCap:bodyProxy /></td>
</tr></table>

Warning: do not do this with the master page editor. Open your master page in "Internal Text Editor".

You will nicely get a page border around your entire page within your margins. With CSS, you can put a border of any style anywhere and on any side.

For a more complex border, I did the following

<table class="pagetable" border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0>
<tr><td class="topleft">/td><td class="top"></td><td class="topright"></td></tr>
<tr><td class="left"></td><td class="pageborder"><MadCap:bodyProxy /></td><td class="right"></td></tr>
<tr><td class="bottomleft"></td><td class="bottom"></td><td class="bottomright"></td></tr></table>

This is in the master page, and with CSS, I can make background images and scale up the margins and borders to anything I want.
This is how to border all your pages.

Hope this helps someone.
jbarwick
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Re: Setting up a cover page

Post by jbarwick »

followup -

Position your border anywhere by making the page margins 0in in the bodyProxy and adjust your table margin or cell padding.
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