FrameMaker Cross Platform Question

[melaroonie]

Hello -
I am currently working on converting a technical manual from FrameMaker 6.0 on a UNIX platform to FrameMaker 7.2 on a Windows machine. I haven't encountered any problems with the text portions of the book, but the graphics are another story! The figures were created using CorelDRAW 12 and were exported as .eps for the original book, but the quality of the figures is severely degraded on the PC. I have tried other formats (.jpg, .gif, .wmf, .tif, and even .png), but to no avail. The manual is distributed in both print and PDF format. The PDF displays well on the screen, but I would really like to see better quality in the FM working files.

I came across a thread from last summer dealing with a similar issue - importing Corel files into FrameMaker, but using an .eps format did not solve my problem.

Any help would be greatly appreciated - thanks!

[roaryg]

If you create a new blank document on windows, and place one of the .eps on the page, how does this print? If its ok, then the graphics are ok, and it is some kind of conversion problem. And I'm sure you know .eps have to be printed onto a postscript printer?

[Howard Allen]

I don't use FrameMaker or CorelDraw (or Windows), so I will defer to more savvy opinions, but if I understand your problem, your images look terrible onscreen in FrameMaker, but render OK in PDF format--correct?

I believe that .eps graphics are saved with a low-resolution (i.e. 72 ppi) placeholder image, which is what gets displayed onscreen. In other words, it will look really bad onscreen, but if you print to paper or PDF, the PostScript code will be rendered correctly. The same thing applies in other DTP applications, like InDesign, which places low-resolution onscreen placeholders for bitmap images as well. If your .eps images print OK and look OK on PDFs, then I don't think you have anything to worry about. It's just the nature of the beast, and something you have to get used to.

[dogmandouglas]

Quite a few DTP applications had the same issue, low res preview but high res print out. Quark addressed the problem by allowing you either a high res preview or low res preview.

The low res image was used of course when computers didn't have that much memory and the processors were too slow to display high res in real time, but this is not so much of a problem these days.

It's hard to think that not so long ago, that using Compugraphic DTP typesetting equipment I had to type in code for fonts, on a green screen – leave space for pictures to be inserted later, and didn't see what the page looked like until I either previewed it on a separate monitor or sent it to bromide.

[melaroonie]

I tried printing a new document with an .eps graphic - no change. I'll continue to try some different import options to see if I can get the best combination. Yes, we have postscript printers, so that is covered.

Thanks for your reply, Tim.

[Steve Rindsberg]

>> The figures were created using CorelDRAW 12 and were exported as .eps for the original book, but the quality of the figures is severely degraded on the PC.

Degraded where? On the screen or when printing them to a PS printer? You don't see the actual EPS on screen, just a preview of it, which may have been created at fairly low resolution, so it might well look nasty on screen. Unlike many apps, Draw can export EPS with a WMF preview; you might try a few of those. I don't know whether FrameMaker handles them correctly; not all apps do. It's worth a try.

There's a service pack for Draw 12 that has something specific to do with EPS. Whether import or export, I don't recall, but it might be worth looking that up.