Watermarks? Am I [nearly] alone? *MOSTLY SOLVED*

[sdcinvan]

Greetings all,

One of the pretty important features I miss from when I used FrameMaker (or even Microsoft Word) was the ability to quickly turn on/off various watermarks - either built-in (from library) or custom made text or image watermarks.

For instance, it is important that I watermark documents as, "for internal company use only..." or "draft - do not distribute", etc.

Early on, to get around this Flare limitation (AFAIK), I was manually added watermarks into the page layouts when required (adding to stylesheet as suggested by MadCap didn't work as I required).

But editing page layouts is no longer feasible because all my projects are part of Global Project Linking. I had to find a solution! My work-around was to create duplicates for each global master page layout and for each of the several custom watermarks that I regularly require.

This is not acceptable because for each project, I need to temporarily:
- Edit the Target > General > Master Page Layout
- Edit the project's TOC for each page that is not set to use a "default" page layout. I use a few custom layouts in a single project.
- Whenever there is a change to one of the global master page layouts, I must duplicate those changes to every page layout with a watermark! Very tedious!

There *must* be a better way.

The documentation suggests that I add the watermark to the stylesheet. But that won't work if I am using a gpl master stylesheet... that all projects share!

Another problem with watermarks is that they do not appear as overlays *on top* of the document's content. In other words, watermarks become hidden under document images and tables. This is not proper documentation watermark behavior. A watermark should be a semi-transparent overlay! That is how they work in any other documentation application I have used.

Ideally, I would love to see a watermark feature added to the project target's properties. I should allow for one or more watermarks, either text (font/size/color/pivot/position adjustable) or an image (position/pivot adjustable).

Thank you for your collective insight ,
Shawn

[Nita Beck]

Let me riff on this a bit... (and I don't have access to Flare so can't test any of this out)...

How about if you associate an image of DRAFT or whatever as a background image for your p.Footer style, assuming you've got such a style. But rather than defining the background image for p.Footer in your main stylesheet, put it in a totally separate stylesheet ... maybe call it "DraftWatermark.css", have nothing else in it except that, and LINK it to the main stylesheet. Now, I'm not sure how mediums would come into play, but the idea is that, when you need to generate your document as a DRAFT, you associate the target with the "DraftWatermark.css" instead of the main stylesheet. Would that work? That could function as an "on/off" switch, as you'd like... You'd get "DRAFT" in the footer on every page that has a footer.

Just a thought. If it ends up having some merit, I suggest that you put the "DraftWatermark.css" and the DRAFT image in your global project so you could use them in all of your projects.

I'm gonna have to try this out myself. Might be a good tip-n-trick to share at my next user group meeting.

[ChoccieMuffin]

We use a variable set which is local to each project to insert "local_data.Status" as a variable into the footer of master page layouts. That way we can edit the "Status" variable in the local_data variable set in an individual project rather than the global one.

It doesn't give us a proper watermark (as in, all the way across the page) but does allow us to add the text to all footers in the project.

The only gotcha in that is that when you want to delete the word DRAFT from the variable you have to replace it with a space rather than just saving, otherwise the deletion doesn't stick.

[sdcinvan]

Happy Friday all,

Some good ideas, thank you.

But doesn't this illustrate that Flare needs a watermark feature? Like I stated, it should be included in the Target properties. I find it rather ridiculous that I have to put so much effort into watermarking documents...even still, the watermarks are still not semi-transparent.

[ChoccieMuffin]

Another request sent.

[sdcinvan]

Another request sent.

Me too... probably my fourth since last year. I'll keep sending requests until they add such a feature or send me a cease and desist order.

[Daniel Lemke]

Hi Shawn,

I have been struggling with this today. Here is my experience so far. Maybe some of it will be helpful to you, and if anything, take it as a symbol of solidarity.

I added a variable called Watermark to my project. If a watermark is needed, I can simply add text to the target variable and it will show up.
I added the following to my CSS:

Code: Select all

	div.Watermark
	{
		text-align: center;
	}
	
	div.Watermark p
	{
		color: #CCCCCC;
		font-size: 120pt;
		text-transform: uppercase;
	}

I added a decoration frame to each of my page layout pages. It is rotated 45 degrees and covers much of the page. I set the layout depth of the frame to sink to the bottom.
In the frame, I inserted the variable into the paragraph and wrapped it inside a div with the Watermark class.

The pro to this is that I can push this frame to every project and if an output doesn't need a watermark, I just leave the variable blank in the target. Authors can easily set a watermark per target that they don't have to remember to remove later (unless they are re-using targets).
The con is that I have to choose between the "watermark" sitting underneath all the other elements, thus being obscured by images, or the watermark sitting above all the other elements, thus obscuring much of the text.

I tried to solve the con by using the CSS opacity attribute, which works in HTML5 output, but not in PDF output. I entered a ticket with Flare to request support for "opacity" in PDF output. If that goes through at some point, I think it might be even more flexible than a feature specific to adding watermarks.

[Daniel Lemke]

One note on this is that if you already use a decoration frame in your page layouts, you will have trouble. See http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... mes#p83672 for more on that.

[sdcinvan]

One note on this is that if you already us a decoration frame in your page layouts, you will have trouble. See http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... mes#p83672 for more on that.

Hello Dan,

I'm afraid that I don't have much time (release cycle... tomorrow is release day) but I came up with a way that works really well. BTW, I still want Flare to provide native/specific support for semi-transparent watermarking!

In my situation, I have a requirement for multiple types of watermarks so the short form explanation is...
I insert the watermarks (png images) as decorations inside the page layouts. Then I apply a condition to each of the different types of watermarks. For example: Conditions like Draft, Internal, etc.)
Then inside each Target, I toggle the conditions related to the watermarks I need. Since the watermarks, page layouts, and conditions are all in my Global Project Linked master document, every document (over 50 now) can quickly use any of my multiple watermarks.

So, my watermark system works quite well now (but they are still not semi-transparent overlays! )

If anyone wants specific steps on how I accomplished this, please reply and I'll endeavor to write up instructions sometime next week.

[cruitbuck]

The power of conditional formatting.

[sdcinvan]

The power of conditional formatting.

Sure... ain't it wonderful.

Except, I still can't have translucent watermarks.

When I get some time, I am going to experiment with .svg watermarks again.

[GerardFalla]

If the images used are pngs, surely setting the opacity of the requisite layer of the watermark text in the originating app in which the png was created to 50% would get you what you need?