Japanese users as well as multinational business users can take full advantage of the sophisticated Japanese publishing features in Adobe® FrameMaker® 7.0 software. The ability to define "combined" fonts of western and Japanese characters in the same document, integrated Japanese menus and messages, and composition rules are just a few features in FrameMaker 7.0. Targeted for Japanese authors and workgroups who need to create business-critical documents-such as product documentation, engineering specifications, work instructions, catalogs, manuals, and policies and procedures-FrameMaker is both flexible and powerful.
FrameMaker users, such as multinational companies needing to exchange information with their business partners in Japan, do not have to purchase a special Japanese version of FrameMaker. Users can access the Japanese features of FrameMaker 7.0 with a familiar user interface as long as a Japanese operating system is installed. Documents created in these western operating system environments can be directly opened and edited in the Japanese environment, and then printed, distributed, and translated.
Japanese characters
Traditionally, Japanese is written vertically starting in the upper-right-hand corner. Japanese can also be written horizontally and from left to right. A growing number of publications follow the left-to-right, top-to bottom western style. This is particularly true for professional publications.
Japanese character systems
The Japanese script is a mixture of three different systems called kanji, hiragana, and katakana. Hiragana and katakana are known collectively as "kana".
Kanji, adopted from the Chinese, consists of the basic ideograms or characters, each representing one word. To date, there are more than 8000 kanji characters that constitute more than 300,000 words.
Hiragana characters are used for words of Japanese origin. Hiragana characters are often used for particles (such as to, at, and other prepositions) that designate subject or object and for endings or words spelled in kanji.
Katakana, a more squared-off character set, duplicates the same set of sounds that exist for hiragana, but katakana is often used for writing English and other foreign words and names-similar to a shorthand system.
Japanese text input
Front-end processor
The most widely used method for entering Japanese characters is via built-in or third-party software that allows text to be entered by typing the word phonetically at the keyboard (usually using Roman letters). The user then searches via the software for the proper kanji character because many characters have the same pronunciation.
This input software is called a front-end processor (FEP) or, sometimes, an input method editor (IME).
Japanese double-byte character sets
Because there are so many Japanese characters, it is impossible to represent them all with a single 7-bit or 8-bit data type. The Japan Industrial Standard (JIS) Committee (the Japanese equivalent of ANSI) has established a standard character set, known as JIS X208, that determines the characters to be defined and the code to be assigned to the characters. There are at least three distinct encodings for JIS X208:
JIS Operates in a 7-bit environment and supports single-byte ASCII as well as two-byte Japanese characters by using special character sequences that begin with the "escape" (ESC) character.
Shift-JIS Operates in an 8-bit environment and is the native Japanese encoding on Windows® and Mac OS platforms.
EUC (Extended Unix Code) Operates in an 8-bit environment and is widely used on UNIX® platforms.
Shift-JIS versus Unicode
Unicode is a fixed-width, 16-bit character set that covers most of the world's written languages that are in current or expected use in computers. Since type families are generally designed and limited to a particular writing system, a software program still needs type family, language, and formatting information. FrameMaker 7.0 uses Shift-JIS as its internal encoding system for Japanese so users can take advantage of large and growing font sets as well as the tools that extend and manipulate fonts.
Using FrameMaker 7.0 for Japanese publishing
FrameMaker 7.0 includes the ability to create Japanese language documents — all you need is a Japanese operating system to input and display Japanese text. In the Mac OS environment, users can add Japanese capabilities to a western operating system.
Japanese character support and fonts
FrameMaker 7.0 software supports the most popular Japanese text encodings (JIS, Shift-JIS, and EUC) so that workgroup users can exchange text files on various platforms with different formats. FrameMaker also supports Enhanced Type 1 fonts as well as TrueType fonts on Windows and Mac OS platforms.
Inline input
FrameMaker 7.0 supports in-line or on-the-spot input, which allows users to directly type Japanese characters in a WYSIWYG environment instead of creating text in a separate window and placing it on the page. Users can use any compatible FEP or IME of their choice.
Rubi
Rubi characters are very small characters that appear above other characters. Rubi characters annotate characters by indicating their pronunciation or by augmenting their meanings. FrameMaker 7.0 provides precise typographical control of rubi characters and supports in-line input which very few applications offer.
Combined fonts
It is common in technical documentation to mix Japanese and western characters in the same Japanese document. For example, western characters are used for product names, numbers, and the names of people.
FrameMaker 7.0 software allows users to create custom "combined" fonts. When a combined font is used, western characters are displayed using the western fonts, and Japanese characters are displayed using Japanese fonts. This allows users to include both Japanese and western fonts in a line of text, retaining a consistent look as well as the proper proportions for both fonts.
Line breaking and hyphenation (composition rules)
FrameMaker 7.0 complies with Japanese publishing standards by supporting Kumihan (Japanese composition) rules for line breaking and hyphenating text. FrameMaker also allows fine-grain customization of these rules to conform to corporate typographic standards.
Variables
FrameMaker 7.0 supports both Japanese and western country-specific notations of dates, including the use of native Japanese imperial and kanji dates and pages in documents.
Autonumbering
FrameMaker 7.0 software includes 10 types of Japanese autonumbering. This feature adds automatic Japanese numbering for volumes, chapters, paragraphs, footnotes, and pages, letting users easily create and maintain numbering for headings, sections, illustrations, tables, figures, and footnotes.
Autonumber building blocks
It may appear that three Zenkaku numbering styles are identical to several of the existing paragraph numbering options available in western-language versions of FrameMaker today. But these styles are indeed different: They are fixed width, while the western text equivalents are not fixed width so will not suit the needs of users who are manipulating Japanese text.
Index sorting
For Japanese text, kana and kanji characters are sorted by "yomi-gana", which means pronunciation. The rest of the characters that are symbol characters are usually sorted by code value. The typical sorting order is symbols, numerics, Roman alphabetical, kana characters, Japanese symbol characters, and kanji characters.
FrameMaker 7.0 provides the ability to sort Japanese and western characters to automatically and simply produce indexes.
Color libraries
FrameMaker 7.0 software includes DIC Color Guide for spot colors, and Toyo™ Color Finder with more than 1,000 colors based on the most common printing inks in Japan. In addition, Tombo crop marks are available when printing for proper registration.
Index sorting
For Japanese text, kana and kanji characters are sorted by "yomi-kana", which means pronunciation. FrameMaker automatically recognizes the pronunciation of kana and sorts them correctly. For kanji, a user needs to provide pronunciation using kana in Marker dialog, so that kanji characters are sorted correctly by pronunciation.
The typical sorting order is as follows: symbols, numerics, Roman alphabetical, kana characters, Japanese symbol characters, and kanji characters.
Electronic publishing
FrameMaker 7.0 software provides powerful electronic publishing options. The Japanese version of Adobe Acrobat® 5.0 software is tightly integrated into FrameMaker 7.0 for Windows and Mac OS, allowing customers to output directly to Japanese Portable Document Format (PDF) in one step.
FrameMaker 7.0 also supports output to HTML and XML with contents written in Japanese.
FrameMaker 7.0 key features
Word processing
Layout
Graphics and color
Long documents and book building
Tables
Integration
Electronic distribution
