RE: FrameMaker 5.5.6 for Linux early reports

["Peter Ring" <pri@xxxxxx>]

I did also get a favorable initial impressions of the Linux version.

I've tried running it on RH 6.1 and Suse 6.3 on small/medium
size machines (K6-2 or PII 300 MHz, 128 Mb, Matrox G200 or G400).

I experienced one minor glitch and have become acutely
aware of a whole new slew of 'challenges'. New for me; I hope
some of you *nixen have seen this before.

The minor glitch is apparently well known to seasoned *nix
Framers: FrameMaker does not like 16 bit display depth. 8 or
24 (or 32) bit works; with a 16 bit display, Frame dies silently
during startup. It wasn't well known to me. I found out what to
do from the current discussion on http://slashdot.org.

The new challenges: a lot more cross-platform documents, i.e.,
a lot more fiddling with fonts and graphic formats. One specific
example:

We've got a lot of documents created on a Windows NT network. The
font information in these documents follow the conventions of Windows.
There's a tradition for having two weight variations and two 'angle'
variations for each typeface family. Actually, the Windows platform
will handle more than two weight variations for a given typeface
family, but most applications don't know what to make of it. Typeface
families with a large number of weights and variations, such as Univers
and  Frutiger, are typically handled by dividing the family into a
number of distinct families, each with a 'regular', 'bold', 'italic',
and 'bold italic' variation. Adobe's package #73 contains nine
variations of Frutiger, which are typically divided like this:

FontName              FullName                  Menu name and style
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Frutiger-Light        Frutiger 45 Light         Frutiger 45 Light
Frutiger-Bold         Frutiger 65 Bold          Frutiger 45 Light,BOLD
Frutiger-LightItalic  Frutiger 46 Light Italic  Frutiger 45 Light,ITALIC
Frutiger-BoldItalic   Frutiger 66 Bold Italic   Frutiger 45 Light,BOLDITALIC
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Frutiger-Roman        Frutiger 55 Roman         Frutiger 55 Roman
Frutiger-Black        Frutiger 75 Black         Frutiger 55 Roman,BOLD
Frutiger-Italic       Frutiger 56 Italic        Frutiger 55 Roman,ITALIC
Frutiger-BlackItalic  Frutiger 76 Black Italic  Frutiger 55 Roman,BOLDITALIC
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Frutiger-UltraBlack   Frutiger 95 UltraBlack    Frutiger 95 UltraBlack

That is, this selection from the Frutiger family is divided into three new
families, Frutiger 45 Light, Frutiger 55 Roman, and Frutiger 95 UltraBlack.
I confirmed that this is indeed the way FrameMaker on Windows works by
making
a sample document with all variations and then inspecting the document saved
as MIF. So far, so good.

Except that the *nix versions of FrameMaker does not like a FontFamily name
to contain spaces, e.g., 'Frutiger 45 Light' is illegal on *nix, although
it is legal on Windows (I don't know about MacOS).

So how do I add Frutiger to my fontlist if I want a minimum of fuss with
documents that are edited on each platform every other day? Here's an
excerpt
from my fontlist:

<Family                        Frutiger-Light >
<ForeignFamily                 Frutiger 45 Light >
<Text	                         Frutiger-Light >
<Font	   Frutiger-Light        Frutiger-Light >
<Font	   Frutiger-Bold         Frutiger-Light Bold >
<Font	   Frutiger-LightItalic  Frutiger-Light Italic >
<Font	   Frutiger-BoldItalic   Frutiger-Light Bold Italic >
<MapFont < Frutiger 45 Light >             < Frutiger-Light > >
<MapFont < Frutiger 45 Light Bold >        < Frutiger-Light Bold > >
<MapFont < Frutiger 45 Light Italic >      < Frutiger-Light Italic > >
<MapFont < Frutiger 45 Light Bold Italic > < Frutiger-Light Bold Italic > >
<ATM	   Frutiger-Light        Frutiger-Light.pfa >
<ATM	   Frutiger-Bold         Frutiger-Bold.pfa >
<ATM	   Frutiger-LightItalic  Frutiger-LightItalic.pfa >
<ATM	   Frutiger-BoldItalic   Frutiger-BoldItalic.pfa >
<PSName  Frutiger-Light        Frutiger-Light >
<PSName  Frutiger-Bold         Frutiger-Bold >
<PSName  Frutiger-LightItalic  Frutiger-LightItalic >
<PSName  Frutiger-BoldItalic   Frutiger-BoldItalic >

In order to make FrameMaker use Frutiger 45 Light as the 'regular' face
in a family, I enter 'Frutiger-Light' as a Family name. Then, in order to
have FrameMaker recognize 'Frutiger 45 Light' as another name for the
same family, I enter 'Frutiger 45 Light' as a ForeignFamily and subsequently
maps the bold and italic variations to my Frutiger-Light family. Except the
mapping doesn't work because on *nix, not even ForeignFamily names may
contain spaces.

What is a man to do under these circumstances?

Kind regards,
Peter Ring




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Framers@FrameUsers.com [mailto:Framers@FrameUsers.com]On Behalf Of
> Viktor Haag
> Sent: 16. december 1999 01:03
> Cc: Framers Mailing List
> Subject: FrameMaker 5.5.6 for Linux early reports
>
>
> The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
> that has been posted to comp.text.frame as well.
>
>
> Been making light use of Frame for Linux over the past few hours,
> and here's some early impressions:
>

<snip>

>
> Initial impressions are quite favourable: kudos to Adobe!
>
> --


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