Framemaker and its mouse-scrolling problem
Introduction
Related to my master thesis, I have to use the old Framemaker 5.5 on Windows XP. It is an interesting publishing program and, in my opinion, it's a good compromise between Latex and OpenOffice (or Microsoft Words).
It's worth to mention that there're many WYSIWYG implementations of Latex. A program called LyX is one of the most popular. However, I tried to use it in my CFD report but I felt that it was not right. There must be something wrong with the GUI, because most of the Latex commands I need are hard to find. After that I just switched back to Vim+Latex which was still not the best solution.
On the other hand, Framemaker has a lot better GUI with additional basic drawing tools. There are still some issues that it uses proprietary (close) formats, the cost is relatively high for home users, and mouse-scrolling doesn't work properly. Only the latter problem can be solved so far.
The cause of this problem could be that its legacy cross-platform design doesn't support mouse wheel at the beginning. It might be the same case as many UNIX/Linux terminals that have their own implementation of middle-click. This problem can be solved by using another application that grabs the mouse-wheel commands and translate it into new commands that are supported by Framemaker.
Solution for Windows Users
- Install KatMouse or the equivalent program such as Logitech MouseWare. I chose KatMouse because it does its very function while not interfering with the default mouse-setting at all.
- That's all, actually.
Solution for Mac Users
- I have read about a program called USB Overdrive which does the same trick. I haven't tried it out though.