Rick Henkel - FrameMaker-Related Stuff

Earlier, I mentioned how you can automatically move backup files out of your working folders using the command prompt. If you don't like working with the command prompt, you can use a BAT file instead.

1. Right-click on the Move Backups batch file to save it to your desktop.



2. Open the BAT file in a text editor.


Do not double-click the file to open it! Doing so will run the move files command!


3. Update the bottom line of the BAT file with the paths to your working files and your target folder.



4. Save and close the BAT file.



5. Double-click the BAT file to run it.

Blogrolls are lists of blogs that a person reads. For example, the blogs for which I've added links on the right side of this page are just a few of the blogs that I keep tabs on.

Bloglines gives you the ability to add a blogroll to your blog page. Within Bloglines, you can organize your feeds into different folders. You then tell Bloglines what folder you want to feature on your blogroll, and it creates the appropriate code for you to add to your blog template. Seems pretty easy.

FrameMaker has an option for creating backup files every time you save a file, but it has no option for saving the backup files to a different folder. As a result, you can end up with a file folder in which it's difficult to find the file that you want.

To fix this problem, you can run a batch command to move all the backup files to a folder other than the one that contains your working files.

1. Open a command prompt.

2. Type the following and press ENTER:

move /y <drive letter>:\<path to main folder>\*.backup.fm <drive letter>:\<path to backup folder>

(Make sure that you include the space before the drive letter and path to the backup folder.)

For example, assume that you have your main files in the H:\Guides\UserGuide folder and that your backup folder is the UserGuideBackup folder on drive C. You would type the following at the command prompt:

move /y h:\guides\userguide\*.backup.fm c:\UserGuideBackup

Is America's Dumbest Soldiers supposed to be funny? I can't even imagine what these soldiers' families must think of this site.

A must read.

I'm currently testing Shlomo Perets' SP Form Assistant, an add-on to his TimeSavers software. TimeSavers is a plug-in for FrameMaker-to-Acrobat conversions.

With Form Assistant, I'm able to create PDF pop-ups that act much like ALT text does in Web pages. I'm testing it as a solution to acronyms that we use in our documentation. We currently spell out each acronym the first time that it appears in text, but we're having a hard time keeping that rule straight due to many factors. One factor is the number of text insets that we use in different guides. What might be the first occurrence in one guide might not be in another guide.

If we go with Form Assistant, we'd never have to worry about spelling out the acronym. Instead, we'd use pop-up text to show that the acronym means.

Someone has claimed the Gmail invite, and I don't have any more at this time. But I might get some more invites to share. If you'd like me to share, I'll dole them out in the order in which I get requests.

I have one Gmail invite to give. I don't know anyone else who might be interested, so I thought I'd post a message here. If you are interested, send me an e-mail.

(This will also give me a chance to see whether anyone even reads this blog.)

I'm trying out some free tools on my blog. I noticed these items when I looked at Keith Soltys's blog.

The first item is a stats tracker from Site Meter.

The second is a comment and trackback feature from HaloScan.

"Firefox is a free, open-source and cross-platform web browser for Windows, Linux, MacOS X and other operating systems. It is small, fast and easy to use, and offers many advantages over other web browsers, such as the tabbed browsing and the ability to block pop-up windows."

I'd used the previous rendition of this browser, when it was called Firebird, but I think this version is much better. Seems like you can customize more items than you could with Firebird.

I'd always been reluctant to switch from IE because I could load those custom toolbars--Google, Yahoo, etc.--in IE but not in other browsers. But Firefox does include the ability to load versions of those toolbars, called extensions, that people have created. For example, I was able to add an extension to add a "Blog This!" command on my right-click menu.

After only using it for a little bit, I'd have to say that Firefox is already my favorite alternative browser.