Mad About Word and FrameMaker

Sometimes when I use one of the tools, I wish the other had the same feature. I often wistfully wonder (and sometimes go/get mad)—

• Why doesn't FrameMaker have this Word feature?
• Why doesn't Word have this FrameMaker feature?
• Why can't blah do this task like blah-blah does?
• Why does blah make this task so much harder than blah-blah does?
• Would it kill blahtool to simplify some frequently used task by having a shortcut keystroke set instead of the user needing to constantly go to a menu and open one or more series of dialog boxes, select choices, and click OK in each of the boxes?
• For some other frequently used task that opens a dialog box, can more options be on the same dialog box instead of needing to open secondary dialog boxes?
• Can blahtool provide lots more task dialog boxes with preview capabilities instead of the current (seemingly) paltry few? (Example implementation: Preview, then click Apply. Click OK when happy with the view.)

I know some uberusers have encyclopedic memorization of shortcuts, and I wish I had that familiarity and proficiency. Unfortunately, I work with the tools just often enough to have memorized a smaller set of shortcut keystrokes. With some commands that are more obscure than others, I often Google for finding how-to's.

Over time that I've used FrameMaker and Word, I've thought, "I wish FrameMaker had [feature] or was as easy to [do something] as Word", and vice versa. Here is my list of features for comments and wishes.

Zoom View
I like FrameMaker's click zoom in and out and menu. It would have been nice If Word's magnifier icon provided dynamic zoom—Have right click zoom in and left click zoom out where the cursor is. Instead, the magnifier click method requires three clicks each time I want to vary zoom percentage.

*** New news (Mar. 5)! I discovered that Word does have dynamic zoom! The lower right part of the window has a slide switch. You can click and drag the slider, or you can click the plus and minus for incremental sizing. Woohoo!

Find
Would really like it if Word had just put in forward and backward options on the initial dialog box instead of requiring a click on More. (On March 11, a commenter mentioned a Word Find feature for simple forward/backward. Turns out Word 2010 has it. Word 2007 still uses the click-More method.) I like Frame's Forward and Backward options being on the Find dialog box. I like Word's search term buffer so I know what I've searched for previously, especially if I want to search for the term(s) again. If only FrameMaker had the same capability!

Bullets and Numbering
I really like FrameMaker's capability. What you set up is what you get. The capability for a start number or letter, and separate capabilities for subsequent number or letter—flawless. Word's seeming unpredictability for numbering, indentation, and reversion has been a source of aggravation for me for years.

Format Painter
One of my favorite Word features. Select some text (usually line or paragraph), and "paint" the format onto something else. Much quicker than using even a Frame paragraph catalog selection, particularly if I have LOTS of styles, which often requires scrolling to the style I want.

Paste Special
Love being able to use Frame's Shift+Ctrl+v. Word had put Paste Special into the ribbon, prominently. However, it's not as convenient as Shift+Ctrl+v. C'mon, Microsoft. Even Open Office has that shortcut key combo.

Copy and Paste for Images
Both Frame and Word irk me when they offset the results of paste. Can either one of them implement a feature so that the to-be-pasted object sticks to the cursor until you actually do a followup click that releases the object where you want it?

Moving Images Around
Word seems much more friendly for setting up grid snap and scooting images (nudge). Press arrow buttons for moving images in increments.

Inserting Symbols
FrameMaker's offering is like looking at a nickel display case. Word provides a buffet, particularly for inserting special characters. I like finding the symbol I want right in the tool.

Formatting Images
I like Word's simplicity for formatting images. The ribbon version is ok, although I liked the older menu version better for simplicity. It seems I need to use more clicks to get to all the commands I want—size/position are now separate from Format Picture.

OTOH, Word's feature for the image to resize while I click spin box values is nice. Percentages and dimensions are chained together (as default options). Images scale up or down as previews. I can stay in the dialog box for previewing the results. It's like try before you buy.

FrameMaker! It's exhausting to constantly open the Graphics > Scaling dialog box and not have the length and width change when I change the scale. And no option to lock the aspect ratio or relative-to-original size option.

Arrowheads
Word's feature for arrowheads seem easier for shape, size, and direction than Frame's implementation. The only thing I prefer about Frame's arrowhead feature is the ease of selecting the arrow direction.

Tables—Borders and Shading
I find Word's table Borders and Shading dialog boxes very friendly and intuitive, but FrameMaker's clunky and unfriendly. Word provides previews of results.

Tables—Cell-splitting
Word's way is select a cell and split it. FrameMaker requires adding a column or row, then straddling cells. I think FrameMaker's difficulty with easy splits might have something to do with conditionalizing.

Tables—Column Width
I like Word's dialog box for changing column width and previewing when i click Next Column. I really dislike FrameMaker's lack of any sort of preview. It's exhausting reopening the table-width dialog box several times because I don't guess correctly about the width I wanted and how my selection affects the rest of the table. However, I really like FrameMaker's very easy shortcut for resizing the column width to text width—Esc t w (as in tech writer).

FrameMaker Features Only
Ahhh, if only Word had these features that only FrameMaker has!

Overlines
Word just plain doesn't do them. Showing active-low signals is easy with FrameMaker as simply another checkbox option. Word is a disaster waiting to happen if drawing a line over text.

Continuation Variable
One great FrameMaker feature is the continuation variable for the table heading title (aka table caption). Inserting the var ensures that a table that spans more than one page displays "continued" (however the FrameMaker user wants to define the text). The reader knows the table is a continuation, not a new table.

Conditionalizing
FrameMaker makes it easy to do variations of documents for hiding and showing text, figures, tables, table rows. FrameMaker's table rows conditionalizing capability might be the reason why implementing cell splits is difficult. Word doesn't do conditionalizing—oh, sure, maybe in some very primitive way. Comparing the two would be like comparing hopping on one leg to driving a car to get to a driving distance destination.

Importing Formats
FrameMaker's feature has loads of attributes for copying from one document to another. (I use this most often with book files.) Open a file that has attributes and also files for copying attributes to, (Click-shift to select.) In the dialog box, select the "model" file (Import from Document), the attributes to copy (Import and Update), and click Import. Word doesn't do import formats.

Both tools have a secondary means of "importing" formats, but rather primitive, and sometimes it works, and sometimes not. Try copying a style from one file to another if the other file does not have a style with the same name. With both files open, copy an entire paragraph, with paragraph mark, from source to destination. The destination file now includes the source's paragraph style name and style characteristics.

Word features I Wish FrameMaker Had or Had More of
I've noted some of the features in passing, but the following features run throughout in Word that makes me appreciate Word over FrameMaker.

Split/Merge Screen
Word's feature makes it very convenient for copying and pasting items from one part of a document to another. I can copy from the first screen, paste to the second screen, and click the first screen where I left off. Another good use is inserting cross references that originating phrases or icons are all in one spot, which can sit undisturbed in one screen while I hunt for the target that I want to cross reference to.

Spin Boxes
Set field values by clicking arrow buttons for incrementing numbers up and down. Even better, preview the effects. Yes, this is related to images.

Preview Dialog Boxes
View thumbnailish representations of changes before clicking OK, particularly pertinent to images and tables.

What's your madness about FrameMaker and Word?

New Year Ham Day

About the time I bought the turkey that I roasted a couple of weeks ago, I spied the supermarket coupon offering $10 off for purchasing a spiral half or whole ham. Hmmm, I hadn't baked a ham in maybe a few years, and the discount looked reasonable if I could find a ham that didn't cost an arm and a leg. Soooo, a couple of days before the coupon expired, I managed to find a ham priced $26.37.

The price per pound wasn't that bad—$2.99. My ham weighed 8.82 pounds. After the coupon discount, the price per pound came to $1.86. Woohoo!

On the day I prepped the ham for baking, I unwrapped it and found two packets—brown sugar and glaze. Hmmm, so how much of my $1.86/pound went for the sugar and glaze? It depends on how much you trust the alleged weight on the packets? OK, I did not weigh the ham in the store, trusting the marked weight on the pricing label.

I weighed the sugar on my kitchen scale. The scale's weight reasonably matched the label, with some flexibility for possible parallax and slop because the scale being analog instead of digital. (It's old!)

The glaze was another story! It was marked as 7 ounces. It weighed 12 ounces! I decided to weigh the sweeteners together and also toss in the prep instructions for good measure. Holy moley—a pound of non-ham stuff! Soooo, recalculating my purchase, my ham cost $2.09 a pound, although buying glaze and brown sugar separately might have been just as costly. Still a good deal.

I did not consider the bone as non-ham weight. Intact hams include the bone anyway. Eh, I should have weighed the bone and fat that I cut after I portioned slices and pieces afterward, for curiosity's sake. Maybe next time. Anyway, "Ham 101: What to Know Before Buying a Ham" is a good resource for reading up on hams, and it has a handy pig diagram.

On the day the coupon was to expire, I told some lunch buddies about the deal. One friend told me later that after luch was over, she went to her neighborhood supermarket, but did not find any coupons. She said a cashier told her that they tend to pull coupons a few days before the expiration. The next day when I went to the supermarket near me, I saw coupons, even though expiered. Looks like different stores might have different policies for removing coupons.

As in my turkey preparation from last month, I looked up oven time. On Google, I encountered advice that ranged from an hour to several for the same approximate weight. The ham recipe on the tag specified an hour after oven preheating. I was amazed that the ham did take only about an hour to heat.

My pixstrip shows the empty pan, a pixstrip of the items on the scale that shows the non-ham weight, and progression of the ham preparation.

Note: Not shown—For lessening fluid evaporation, I put in foil before putting on the ritzy ham. :-) I had narrow foil, so I used two sheets, one overlapping the other one.

1. I laid out pineapple slices to see how they'd take up space, poking a toothpick at the core's hole about 2/3 way into the ham to keep the slices somewhat in place.
2. I speared a cherry onto each of the exposed toothpicks, nudging pineapple slices as needed.
3. I tore off an additional, smaller piece of foil, placed it on the ham, and wrapped the other two sheets over it and the ham.
4. After the hour of baking time, I pulled the ham out of the oven and opened up the foils. Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm!

I heated the glaze and sugar as directed. It seemed a better idea than fussing with more complicated recipes that I found on the web. I especially decided I didn't want to try recipes that included having to score the ham and jam in cloves.

The next day, the glaze was so thick that when I dipped a spoon in and pulled it out, it resembled caramel-colored warm taffy. I poured in the leftover pineapple and cherry juice, microwaving and stirring until the glaze was manageable. Good enough to smear on leftover turkey also! (I'm talking abut the turkey from last month that I parceled into serving sizes and froze.)

I was amazed that the ham yielded as much meat as it did. The fact that it was spiral-cut helped the parceling-out process a lot. Now I have packets of ham in the freezer to keep packets of turkey company.