Document direction

Introduction

FrameMaker allows you to author documents in both Left-To-Right (LTR) as well as Right-To-Left (RTL) scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Farsi. You can also choose to author multi-directional documents. This means that you can author a document in a specific direction that includes parts authored in the other direction. For example, you can author a document in a LTR script such as English that includes paragraphs and tables authored in RTL scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Farsi. Or you can author a multiflow document that contains one flow (text frame) in an LTR language and another flow in an RTL language.

Figure 1. Document containing text authored in LTR (English) and RTL (Arabic, Hebrew, and Farsi) scripts

Besides the text in a document, you can also change the orientation of the images in a document based on the direction of the document (see Change direction of a document containing objects). You can add multi-directional text lines to the images in your documents (see Add a text line to a graphic).

You can define a mini TOC in a FrameMaker document in which the direction either LTR or RTL. Use the directional marks in your document (Insert > Directional Marks) to insert marks of type LRT/RTL embedding, mark, or override.

You can also copy and paste such text to and from FrameMaker documents (see Import Microsoft Word files).

FrameMaker provides out-of-the-box document direction support for both unstructured documents and DITA topics. However, for structured documents based on other Structured Applications, the application developer will need to define the dir property in the EDD. For details, see the Structured Application Developer Reference Guide.

Change the direction of the current document

To change the direction of the current document do the following:

1. Choose Format > Document > Direction > Left-to-Right to switch the document direction to Left-to-Right.

2. Choose Format > Document > Direction > Right-to-Left to switch the document direction to Right-to-Left.

The position of the insertion point changes based on the direction of the document.

Inheritance design

The direction authoring support in FrameMaker is based on an inheritance design. By default, the objects in a document inherit the direction of the document. For example, direction of the paragraphs or tables inserted into a RTL document will be RTL. FrameMaker uses this inheritance design to allow you to author multi-direction documents.

Caret location and movement

By default, the cursor in an RTL enabled document moves right to left as your type. FrameMaker now has system of a strong (primary) caret and a weak (secondary) caret. The strong caret indicates where an inserted character will be displayed when that character's direction is the same as the base direction of the text. The weak caret shows where an inserted character will be displayed when the character's direction is the opposite to the base direction.

To change the movement behavior of the caret:

1. Choose Edit > Preferences.

2. In the Caret Movement group, select Logical to ensure that the key movement remains the same as the logical order of inserted characters.

   Select Visual to ensure that the cursor movement is in the direction of the keys. For example, the left key moves the cursor in the left direction.