System Settings: DST > MIF 7
If you frequently translate similar or identical MIF documents in which only the content changes, you can use the MIF 7 and MIF 8-2019 section of the system settings to set up templates that determine how a MIF document is displayed in crossDesk. These templates can be selected by the project manager when setting up a project.
To create a new template, click New in the Document settings template section and write over New template with the name you have chosen. You can enter additional information into the Description field.
Click Delete to remove a template from the template list.
The Customize MIF settings Section
The display of paragraphs and characters in MIF documents can be controlled by means of catalog formats (similar to styles in MS Word). Catalog formats determine the formatting of paragraphs or characters, e.g. bold or larger type for headings.
In the Customize MIF settings section you can define how these catalog formats (styles) are going to be displayed in Across. This makes it possible, to avoid translating a certain catalog format. You can also decide whether these paragraphs should be visible or hidden for the translator.
You can also add a catalog format (style) to the currently selected template and select how this should be displayed in Across by clicking Add in the Customize MIF settings section.
First define whether the style pertains to the paragraph level or to the character level. Then enter the name of the style, making sure to write it exactly as it will appear in FrameMaker and then select how this should be displayed for the translator in crossDesk. In the case of styles at paragraph level you can specify whether they will be treated as normal, locked, hidden or ignored. If you select Ignored, that particular style will not be considered when checking in the document, which takes pressure off system resources, but also means that it cannot be viewed by the project manager or made visible at a later point. In the case of character styles, you can define whether they should be displayed as normal or placeable, i.e. in the form of gray fields that cannot be changed and can only be copied into the target text.
Using Regular Expressions
Additionally, you can select the Content option under Style in order to lock, hide, or ignore paragraphs of the MIF document by using regular expressions in crossDesk. For instance, a line that only contains a number can be reproduced with the regular expression ^[0-9]+$. All lines that only contain a number can be expressed in this way. You can also select one of the predefined templates for frequently used regular expressions. Then click Insert and adapt the regular expression to your requirements, if necessary.
Use Edit to customize existing styles and Delete to remove them.
Importing MIF Documents
Via Load you can select a MIF document with a style that will be subsequently imported and inserted in the template. Then you can define how the respective styles are going to be displayed in crossDesk. In order to do this, select a style from the list and click into the empty line in the Type column. A drop-down list will then appear from which you can select the desired type.
The following icons are used to display the styles:
Fonts button
You can make manual adjustments within the "Fonts" section by clicking the Fonts button.
The NonTextFamilies fonts, which you can add, edit, or delete to solve the Zacute/tcaron problem in FrameMaker, are listed in the upper part of the pane. The list should correspond to the list of NonTextFamilies fonts in the maker.ini file.
In the lower section of the window you can carry out the so-called font mapping. FrameMaker 7.0 is not based on Unicode (i.e. it does not "understand" Unicode) but Microsoft and Across both are, which means it may be necessary to "map" certain fonts when checking in a MIF document, i.e. to temporarily replace them with 'virtual fonts'.
If the option Automatically adapt fonts to standard code page of target language is enabled, the font mapping is performed automatically and usually does not need to be done manually.
Click Add to specify a font to be replaced by other font through mapping when translating MIF documents.
First enter a font to be replaced or select it from the drop-down list. Then select the target language and, if necessary, sublanguage in which the font is to be replaced.
From the drop-down list below, select the font to be used in the target language instead of the original font. You can determine which fonts are to be listed in the drop-down list:
- all virtual fonts that support the language
- all fonts that support the language
- all fonts
Click OK to save these settings.
You can change the mapping of a font via Edit and delete the mapping via Delete.
The Advanced Button
The Advanced button enables you to define advanced MIF settings.
- Firstly, you can define whether the following special characters are removed when checking in:
- New page
- New column
- New line
- Conditional hyphen
As a matter of principle, this option only applies to conditional hyphens that have been inserted manually in the FrameMaker source document (character code: <Char DiscHyphen>). Conditional hyphens that have been inserted automatically by FrameMaker (character code: <Char SoftHyphen>) are always removed from the source document during check-in. These conditional hyphens are automatically re-inserted in the document when opening the target-language document in FrameMaker.
- Change bars
Editable fields
Additionally, you can select an editing mode for editable fields. Across enables the translation of certain elements in FrameMaker documents, such as hyperlinks and index entries, by means of editable fields. Editable fields appear in the form of green boxes in crossDesk. To avoid editable fields, you can generate separate paragraphs instead.
Language tags
In addition, you can determine how language tags are to be adapted in the target document. Across automatically adapts the language tags contained in MIF documents (e.g. for encoding the language information for the spell-check and hyphenation of the document) to the respective target language (e.g. from <PgfLanguage USEnglish> to <PgfLanguage German>).
You can determine whether the language tags in the entire document are to be adapted to the target language or whether the original language tags, i.e. the language tags of the source language, are to be translated in untranslated parts of the document.
Variables, formats, pages
Moreover, you can determine how the elements of MIF documents are to be processed. You can select whether the elements are to be treated normally, ignored, hidden, or locked within the scope of the check-in process. If the setting Ignored is selected, the element will not be checked in and cannot be viewed by the project manager or be made visible in crossDesk.
- You can determine how the following elements are to be processed:
- System variables
- User variables
- Cross-Reference Formats
- Numbering Formats
- Master Pages
- Reference pages
Index entries
Finally, you can define that index entries are always placed at the end of a paragraph. This prevents the text to be translated from being fragmented by index entries.
Hidden conditional text
Optionally, hidden conditional text can be ignored during check-in.
