Adobe FrameMaker for Mac OS X

Using FrameMaker in the Classic Environment

Apple phased out Macs that can boot up in Mac OS 9 in the summer of 2004, although, FrameMaker can still be used on PowerPC Macs thanks to Mac OS X's Classic environment. However, Intel-based Macs and PowerPC Macs running Mac OS 10.5 Leopard do not support Classic and, therefore, cannot run Mac FrameMaker.

Tiger (Mac OS 10.4)

• A couple of users have reported issues creating PDF files after upgrading to Mac OS 10.4. One issue is PDF files created with Distiller 5.0.5 cannot be found after distillation even though Distiller reports that the job was successful. I can't verify this, but apparently turning off the Optimize For Fast Web View and Embed Thumbnails options in Distiller's Job Options > General pane resolves the issue. Other users report they've had no problems whatsoever running FrameMaker with Tiger, and that both FrameMaker and Classic run noticeably faster.

• There appears to be some interference with the F9–F12 character formatting shortcuts in FM6 and Tiger (confirmed with 10.4.6) and it appears to be caused by Tiger's Expose and Dashboard shortcuts. If you go to Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts and turn off the Expose and Dashboard shortcuts, the function keys appear to work OK in FM6.

• With Mac OS 10.4.6, FrameMaker 6 fails to export to Word and RTF (perhaps other formats, too) and locks up. If the online help fails to open from within FrameMaker, open the FM6.hlp file in FrameMaker > Help manually.

• One cool new feature in Tiger is that all configured Mac OS X printers appear in the print dialog box of Classic apps (which means I can now print from FrameMaker to my inkjet printer that's connected via an AirPort Express).

• When a new printer is added in Tiger, it's automatically made available to Classic apps and will appear in FrameMaker's Print dialog box, in the Printer pop-up menu. However, when a Mac OS X printer is deleted, it remains listed by Classic apps, although selecting it will produce no output. If for some reason you reinstall a Mac OS X printer, you'll end up with a uplicate printer being listed in FrameMaker's Printers list, duplicates appearing as Printer-1, Printer-2, and so on. To delete these printers, open Macintosh HD > Applications (Mac OS 9) > Utilities > Desktop Printer Utility, and choose Delete from the File menu. A window listing all printers appears and you can delete the ones you no longer need individually.

• The scroll wheel on Apple's Mighty Mouse works in FrameMaker with either MS IntelliPoint 2.3 or USB Overdrive, the former driver providing the smoothest operation.

• When attempting to save a document in FrameMaker, the following message may appear. If it does, click OK, and then try saving again. The message doesn't usually appear a second time.

Other Issues Running FrameMaker in the Classic Environment

• With FrameMaker 7.0, the Save As PDF option is not available. Solution: Save as PostScript file, and then distill manually.

• Files cannot be added to a book by using drag and drop.

• If FrameMaker complains of a damaged preferences file, try restarting Classic. If that fails, delete the preferences file in Macintosh HD > System Folder > Preferences. FrameMaker will create a new preferences file when it's restarted. You'll have to set your preferences and zoom settings again.

• Occasionally, FrameMaker may display an alert dialog, but the alert will be obscured by the windows of other apps. No other FrameMaker windows will be selectable, giving the impression that FrameMaker has frozen, and the FrameMaker icon will bounce in the Dock. The solution is to select another application, and then click the FrameMaker icon in the Dock. This will show the alert, allowing you to respond to it.

• Type 1 font suitcases cannot be opened in Mac OS X, making it impossible to check their contents. However, you can use Font/DA Mover, an old Classic app, to view the contents and move individual bitmap files.

• Copy and paste between FrameMaker in Classic and Mac OS X apps works for the most part, but not always with double-byte text such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. This is because FrameMaker and Mac OS 9 use Shift-JIS encoding for two-byte text, whereas Mac OS X uses Unicode. If you do run into this problem, I recommend SubEthaEdit for encoding conversion. It can convert text directly in the document window, so there's no need to save your text to file beforehand. If you're trying to copy, for example, Japanese text from Excel into FrameMaker and all you get is mojibake, copy and paste the text into a TextEdit document, copy it in TextEdit, and then paste it into FrameMaker. I'm not sure why this method works, but assume there must be some sort of text encoding conversion going on.

• ATM Deluxe 4.6 and the ATM Light 4.6.2 control panel can both be used with FrameMaker in Classic.

• Although Mac OS X doesn't support double-byte OCF fonts (Japanese, Chinese, and Korean), they can still be used with FrameMaker in Classic and managed with ATM Deluxe.

• It's best to disable any unnecessary extensions and control panels in Macintosh HD > System Folder > Extensions and Macintosh HD > System Folder > Control Panels.

• Mac OS X's Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities) is a great way to monitor CPU usage of the Classic environment. Choose Active Processes from the Show pop-up menu. The Process Name for the Classic environment on my Mac is usually "(null)" but occasionally appears as "TruBluEnvironment." I put Activity Monitor in the Dock and start it automatically at log in. A little bargraph on the Dock icon shows current CPU usage.

• By default, FrameMaker 7.0's HTML help system launches Internet Explorer. If you'd rather use Safari, locate the Applications (Mac OS 9) > Adobe FrameMaker 7.0 > Help > help.html file, choose Get Info from the File menu, and choose Safari from the Open with pop-up menu.

• To enable Microsoft mouse-wheel scrolling for Classic applications, including FrameMaker, you need to install MS IntelliPoint 2.3 in the Mac OS 9 System Folder. USB Overdrive works, too, but not as smoothly.

• If you customize Mac FrameMaker's interface by using an fmCustomUI file, be aware that if you make this text file with TextEdit, a .txt extension will be added automatically and FrameMaker won't read the file when you try to load the customization files. The workaround is to deselect the Hide Extension option on TextEdit's Save dialog box and delete the .txt extension, or use another text editor.

• One user reports that even FrameMaker 4.0 works in Classic, although there are some display issues with character widths.

FrameMaker Memory Usage

You can monitor FrameMaker's memory usage in System Preferences > Classic > Memory/Versions, as shown below.

To allocate more memory to FrameMaker, in the Finder, select Macintosh HD > Applications Mac OS 9 > FrameMaker 6.0 > FrameMaker 6.0, and choose Get Info from the File menu. (FrameMaker 7.0 resides in a folder titled Adobe FrameMaker 7.0.) The info window shown below appears. Set the Preferred Size as necessary.

My Experience

Update: The 100% CPU usage issue when using Mac FrameMaker in Classic only seems to occur when a palette is selected. CPU is at around 6–7% when a document or book is selected. In my case, CPU was at 100% all the time because, out of habit, I always had the QuickAccess Bar open. Close that and CPU drops to 6% and the fans go off. Peace and quiet!

I start the Classic environment and FrameMaker 6.0 automatically at log in. For some reason, the Classic environment grabs all unused processor cycles and not long after my Mac's fans come on at full speed. To resolve this issue, all I have to do is click the FrameMaker icon in the Dock once, then select a Mac OS X app. The Classic environment releases all the CPU cycles and eventually the fans go off. I don't yet know whether this is caused solely by FrameMaker or whether it's an issue with another app. I'm running the following extensions in Classic: ATM, Japanese Language Kit, Default Folder, Microsoft IntelliPoint, Spell Catcher 8, and Stuffit.

On some Macs, you can prevent the fans coming on full blast by selecting Reduced from the Processsor Performance pop-up menu in Preferences > Energy Saver. I've created two AppleScripts to automate this. Below is the script to set Processor Performance to Reduced. To create a script to set Processor Performance to Automatic, simply change the word Reduced to Automatic.

tell application "System Preferences"
activate
end tell
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
tell process "System Preferences"
set frontmost to true

tell menu bar 1
tell menu bar item "View"
tell menu 1
click menu item "Energy Saver"
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
tell process "System Preferences"
tell window "Energy Saver"
tell tab group 1
click radio button "Options"
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell

tell application "System Events"
tell process "System Preferences"
set frontmost to true
tell window "Energy Saver"
tell tab group 1
click pop up button 1
tell pop up button 1
tell menu 1
click menu item "Reduced"
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
tell application "System Events" to ¬
set visible of first application process ¬
whose frontmost is true to false

Scripts to Ease the Pain

In Mac OS X, you can select a word or phrase in virtually any app and look it up in Google simply by choosing Search With Google from the Services menu. Alas, this menu is not available in Classic so FrameMaker users cannot use this function. Until now...

Bill Briggs—Macworld Contributor, Lecturer, AppleScript Wizard, and FrameMaker User—has kindly put together four AppleScripts that allow FrameMaker users to quickly search in Google. There are four scripts altogether: two for FrameMaker 6.0, and two for FrameMaker 7.0. One script in each pair opens a new window in Safari, the other one opens a new tab. You choose.

• Download: GoogleInSafari.sit

Simply download, unstuff, and put the scripts in your FrameMaker 6.0 > Modules > Scripts folder (or Adobe FrameMaker 7.0 > Modules > Scripts folder). Restart FrameMaker, and they'll be ready to use in the Scripts menu.

Note: Due to a quirk in FrameMaker 6.0's AppleScript implementation, to look up text in a table, in addition to copying the text to the clipboard before running the script, you'll have to run the script twice. Bill is investigating the cause.

Tip: In addition to AppleScripts, the Scripts menu provides an easy way to access frequently used FrameMaker documents. Simply make an alias of any FrameMaker document and put it in the Scripts folder. When you restart FrameMaker, you'll be able to open the document simply by selecting it from the Scripts menu.

See the Links page for some useful resources about Mac OS 9 and the Classic environment.

Spotlight and EasyFind

Mac OS X's Spotlight is great for finding things on your computer, but it won't search inside FrameMaker files because there's no plug-in available. EasyFind, a standalone search application by DEVONtechnologies, however, will search the contents of your FrameMaker files, and, from my initial tests, it appears to work very well.