Frame 7 & Unicode

[Dan Emory <danemory@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following statement was found on page 4 of the 38-page Reviewer's Guide 
to FM7. It is the only statement found in that document which is relevant 
to the basic question about the degree of support for Unicode:

"UTF-8/UTF-16) characters in XML
files can be automatically mapped to the
appropriate fonts for printing."

I parse this statement to mean that, if you export an FM7 document to XML, 
the XML file can be sent to a printer which presumably utilizes Unicode fonts.

It is quite clear, therefore, that FM7 does not support Unicode fonts.

This conclusion is confirmed, as Dmitri Yunov pointed out, by the Q and A 
on page 5 of the FM7 FAQ, which states that FM7 supports Unicode encoding 
for reading and writing XML in Western European and Asian languages.... 
Unicode characters that do not map to FrameMaker software's internal 
character set are imported as FrameMaker markers and exported intact when 
you save your XML files."

Thus, it is clear that FM7's "internal character set" is the same as it was 
in FM6, probably including the 6 locked code points that make it 
impossible, with ordinary fonts, to use FM7 for Eastern and Central 
European languages, as well as for Cyrillic languages. The only workaround 
is to use country-specific fonts which, according to Dmitri and others, get 
around the locked code point impasse.

So Dmitrii's conclusion about Unicode support is correct. The only added 
feature is the ability to properly import Unicode from XML document 
instances. But  (and this is a big but):

1. If you import an XML document instance containing Unicode characters 
that do not represent characters in FM7's internal character set, they will 
be imported as markers, and the characters themselves will not be 
displayable or printable.

2. if you are originating documents in FM7 for export to XML, any 
characters that cannot be represented in FM7's internal character set will 
have to be represented by markers in some prescribed syntax. These markers 
will than be converted to the corresponding Unicode characters on export to 
XML.

3. To properly print FM7 documents which contain Unicode characters 
represented by markers, you must export them to XML, and print from the 
XML, which is ridiculous.

4. Resorting to the use of country-specific fonts in FrameMaker so as to 
produce FM7 documents in unsupported languages would, on export to XML, 
produce a mis-mapping of some or all of the characters in the unsupported 
language.





====================
| Nullius in Verba |
====================
Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory@primenet.com
177 Riverside Ave., STE F, #1151, Newport Beach, CA 92663
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