Adobe FRAMEMAKER 6.0, Manual

Page: 19 / 323

19 ADOBE FRAMEMAKER 6.0
Using MIF Statements
The most accurate source of information about MIF files is a MIF file generated by a FrameMaker product.
MIF files generated by a FrameMaker product can be very lengthy because a FrameMaker product repeats
information and provides default objects and formats for all documents. You may find it difficult to
determine the minimum number of statements that are necessary to define your document by looking at
a FrameMaker-generated MIF file.
To better understand how a FrameMaker product reads MIF files, study the following example. This MIF
file uses only four statements to describe a document that contains one line of text:
<MIFFile 6.00> # The only required statement
<Para # Begin a paragraph
<ParaLine # Begin a line within the paragraph
<String `Hello World'> # The actual text of this document
>#end of Paraline # End of ParaLine statement
>#end of Para # End of Para statement
The MIFFile statement is required in each MIF file. It identifies the FrameMaker product version and must
appear on the first line of the file. All other statements are optional; that is, a FrameMaker product provides
a set of default objects if you specify none.
Comments in a MIF file are preceded by a number sign (#). By convention, the substatements in a MIF
statement are indented to show their nesting level and to make the file easier to read. The MIF interpreter
ignores spaces at the beginning of a line.
This example is in the sample file hello.mif . To see how a FrameMaker product provides defaults for a
document, open this file in a FrameMaker product. Even though the MIF file does not specify any
formatting, a FrameMaker product provides a default Paragraph Catalog and Character Catalog. In
addition, it provides a right master page, as well as many other default properties.
Save this document as a MIF file and open the FrameMaker-generated MIF file in a text editor or in a
FrameMaker product as a text file. (For information on how to save and open MIF files, see “Opening and
saving MIF files” on page 16.)
You’ll see that the MIF interpreter has taken the original 6-line file and generated over 1,000 lines of MIF
statements that describe all the default objects and their properties. To see the actual text of the document,
go to the end of the file.
This example demonstrates an important point about MIF files. Your MIF file can be very sparse; the MIF
interpreter supplies missing information. Most documents are not this simple, however, and require some
formatting. The following sections describe how to add additional document components, such as
paragraph and character formats, a table, and custom page layouts, to this minimal MIF file.
Creating and applying paragraph formats
In a FrameMaker document, paragraphs have formatting properties that specify the appearance of the
paragraph’s text. A paragraph format includes the font family and size, indents, tab stops, the space
between lines in a paragraph, and the space before and after a paragraph. In a FrameMaker document, the
end of a paragraph is denoted by a single carriage return. You control the amount of space above and below
the paragraph by modifying the paragraph’s format, not by adding extra carriage returns.