FrameAC (Frame Active Control) is a FrameMaker plugin that enables developers to use Visual Basic to control FrameMaker.
FrameAC is used by companies worldwide to enhance and improve productivity of FrameMaker without resorting to costly C development time for database connectivity systems interfacing and dialogue based tools.
Who should use FrameAC?
FrameAC has primarily been developed for programmers with experience of Visual Basic to develop macros for FrameMaker, or to implement more complex publishing systems and extensions to FrameMaker.
FrameAC can be used by FDK developers to ‘prototype’ their FrameMaker clients before implementation in C. Development in Visual Basic provides an instant runtime testing environment saving time over the traditional compile-test cycle of C and C++.
What can FrameAC do?
FrameAC can be used to implement almost anything a FrameMaker user can do manually. It provides all the power and flexibility of Visual Basic in conjunction with FrameMaker.
FrameAC includes a scripting environment that you can use to create scripts that manipulate FrameMaker objects and documents. You can use these scripts to automate a wide range of tasks you perform manually. You can also use the Event Editor to run scripts when triggered by FrameMaker events or keyboard commands. Scripts can be written using VBScript or Javascript.
You can use FrameAC to develop three types of application:
- ActiveX plug-ins
- Controller applications
- Runtime scripts
FrameAC scripts
FrameAC includes a scripting environment that you can use to create scripts that manipulate FrameMaker documents and objects. You can use these scripts to automate a wide range of tasks you perform manually.
Scripts can also interact with your FrameAC application enabling user level control over more complex systems.
You can create the following types of scripts:
- Visual Basic scripts (VBS)
- JavaScript scripts
- Event-triggered scripts
- Menu driven scripts.
How it works
FrameAC provides an application programming interface (API) to automation controllers via COM such as Visual Basic. Therefore FrameAC can also be used with any programming tool that supports COM. FrameAC uses an Object Oriented model thus making it an ActiveX COM Object. This means that when an object is created and instantiated all properties and methods for this object become available. This leads to a reduction in development time as the programmer is able to see immediately what methods/properties are available on the object that they are using.
Example
The following code gets the current text selection in a document and adds a string of text at the beginning of it.
Dim oDoc As FMDocument
Dim err As Long
Set oDoc = mySession.ActiveDoc
oDoc.AddText oDoc.TextSelection.beg, "This is my new text."
Application and Operating System Compatibility
- FrameAC has been compiled with FrameMaker version specific library files. You would need to download the correct installation for the version of FrameMaker you are using, currently from V6.0 to V7.1
- Development environment Visual Basic/Visual Studio v 6.0
- Supported on Windows 2000 and XP only
- FrameMaker V7.2 for use with VB/VS 6.0 and .NET available soon.
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