ITauthor

In FrameMaker 7.1, when you save documents to DocBook XML, the scaling on images gets lost, without the following workaround.

For example, this afternoon I was in the middle of writing a document and I added a mediaobject element, whose imagedata element referenced an EPS image file I'd created in Illustrator. I sized and positioned the image like I wanted it, within an anchored frame. Here's a screenshot of how it looked (note - the image you get in FrameMaker when you insert an EPS is a low definition TIFF that allows you to size/place the image):

However, when I saved and close the FrameMaker file and then reopened it, this is what I got:

The sizing details are lost. Here's what was in the XML:

<para><mediaobject><imageobject>
<imagedata width = "5.281in" depth = "1.533in" align = "left"
    entityref = "imagedata2" angle = "0.000"
    cropped = "1" float = "0" nsoffset = "0.000in" position = "below"
    xoffset = "0.674in" yoffset = "0.000in"/></imageobject></mediaobject></para>

It looks like the width and depth of the image are recorded, but actually these are the dimensions of the anchored frame.

Thanks to Steve Whitlach for providing the remedy:
www.getnet.com/~swhitlat/DocBook/Frame_Project_Readme.html

The trick is to map FrameMaker's "import size" property to a DocBook element. As usual the handy role element is the obvious choice. So, we need to add the following to the read-write rule for the imagedata element:

attribute "role" is fm property import size;

The "imagedata" section of my read-write rules file looks like this:

element "imagedata"
{
  is fm graphic element "ImageData";
  writer anchored frame 
  {
    specify size in cm;
    export to file "$(docname).eps" as "EPS";
  }
  attribute "fileref" is fm property file;
  attribute "entityref" 
  {
    is fm property entity;
    is fm attribute;
  }
  attribute "align" 
  {
    is fm property alignment;
    value "left" is fm property value align left;
    value "center" is fm property value align center;
    value "right" is fm property value align right;
    value "inside" is fm property value align inside;
    value "outside" is fm property value align outside;
  }
  attribute "angle" is fm property angle;
  attribute "bloffset" is fm property baseline offset;
  attribute "cropped" is fm property cropped;
  attribute "float" is fm property floating;
  attribute "depth" is fm property height;
  attribute "nsoffset" is fm property near-side offset;
  attribute "position" is fm property position;
  attribute "width" is fm property width;  
  attribute "dpi" is fm property dpi;
  attribute "xoffset" is fm property horizontal offset;
  attribute "yoffset" is fm property vertical offset;
  attribute "role" is fm property import size;
}

This gives us the following XML:

<para><mediaobject><imageobject>
<imagedata width = "5.281in" depth = "1.533in" align = "left"
    entityref = "imagedata2" role = "3.933in 1.392in" angle = "0.000"
    cropped = "1" float = "0" nsoffset = "0.000in" position = "below"
    xoffset = "0.674in" yoffset = "0.000in"/></imageobject></mediaobject></para>

Now the image dimensions are recorded as:

role = "3.933in 1.392in"