ExtendScript of the Week: Suppressing a specific FM Alert

Continuing with the “Extend Script of the Week” postings, now we will showcase an extend script which suppresses a specific FM alert which is specified by the user. The script prompts the user to enter the alert string displayed by FM Alert dialog in a text box and then subsequently suppresses the alert when it occurs.

Information about the Script :

• • • ZIP file contains the script .
    • The script works on the basis of FM notifications.
    • For illustrating ,we will take the example of an alert “Finished reading the structured application definitions.” which comes after reading “structapps.fm”.

How to use the Script?

• • • Launch FrameMaker
    • Execute the script and it will prompt for an alert string to be entered.For ex, enter the string “Finished reading the structured application definitions.” Please make sure that the string entered has to be exactly same as the string which appears in the FM alert dialog.
    • After this as you can notice, it will get registered. You can verify this by going to File->Script->Catalog and select the <registered> radio button.
    • Now open the default “structapps.fm” file by going to “Structure Tools->Edit Application Definitions”
    • Click on “Read Application Definitions”
    • The alert which normally comes will not come this time. Even after restarting FM, the alert will keep on getting suppressed.
    • For getting the alert again, go to File->Script->catalog and unregister the script by selecting it and the clicking on <Unregister> button.

I hope this will prove useful to many folks and you can add extra functionality as per your requirements to this script to make it even more powerful.

Regards,
Vikash Kumar
FrameMaker Engineering Team