Change bars

Introduction

In Adobe FrameMaker, change bars help you automatically or manually to indicate the changed lines or paragraphs in a document.

A change bar is a vertical line that visually identifies new or revised text. You can have change bars appear automatically whenever you insert, change, or delete text.

Change bar applied to the left of revised text

Sometimes, you want to flag only important changes to your document rather than flag every change. If you’re sending out the second revision of a document for review, you probably want reviewers to focus on substantive changes. In these situations, you can select specific text to mark with change bars rather than add the change bars automatically.

You can remove the change bars from the text later. For example, between drafts of a manual, you can remove the old change bars before adding new ones.

You can insert change bars in the newer of the two versions of a document by comparing the versions.

Apply change bars automatically

To apply change bars automatically when you change the document, do the following:

1. Make the appropriate document window or book window active. If a book window is active, select the documents you want to affect.

2. Choose Format > Document > Change Bars.

3. Specify the thickness of the change bars and the distance from the column of text to the change bars.

4. Choose the position of the change bars from the Position drop-down list. Select Side Closer To Page Edge or Side Farther From Page Edge to vary the position of the change bars from side to side based on the page layout.

   The position is relative to the edges of the column that contains the changed text, regardless of the number of columns on the page.

5. Choose a color for the change bars from the Color drop-down list.

6. Select Automatic Change Bars, and click Set.

Automatic Change Bars don’t detect changes in graphics imported by reference unless the name of the imported file has been changed. Automatic change bars also don’t detect changes that affect only formatting. For example, if you only change the style of a paragraph from Body to Bullet, no change bar appears. In this case, you can add a change bar manually if necessary.

Apply change bars manually

To manually apply change bars to selected text or multiple paragraphs, do the following:

1. To apply change bars to selected text, choose Format > Style > Change Bar.

2. To apply change bars to paragraphs, click in a paragraph or drag through several paragraphs.

3. Choose Format > Paragraphs > Paragraph Designer and display the Default Font properties.

4. Select Change Bar, and click Apply.

Create a change bar character style

You can also apply change bars to text using a change bar character style.

To create a change bar character style, do the following:

1. Click in any paragraph and choose Format > Characters > Character Designer.

2. In the Character Designer, set all properties to As Is.

3. Select Change Bar.

4. In the Style box, enter a name for the character style.

5. Click Create.

Remove all change bars in a document

To remove all change bars in a document, do the following:

1. Make the appropriate document window or book window active. If a book window is active, select the documents you want to affect.

2. Choose Format > Document > Change Bars.

3. Select Clear All Change Bars, and click Set.

Remove change bars from specific text

To remove change bars from specific text, do one of the following:

• Select the text and choose Format > Style > Change Bar. If some of the selected text isn’t marked with a change bar, choose Format > Style > Change Bar twice to remove the change bars.

• To remove a change bar applied by a character style, select the text and apply Default Font from the Character Catalog.