Re: Unique ID Attribute within FM for XML output

[Dan Emory <danemory@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 01:42 AM 5/3/00 -0400, Leed, Nigel wrote:
>X-posted to Frameusers and Free Framers. Apologies for any doubling up.
>We have FrameMaker+SGML 5.5.6, and WebWorks Publisher 2000 on an NT 4.0 
>(service pack 6) box.
>
>We are producing documentation in XML format.
>What we want to be able to do is to define our own Unique ID Attribute 
>within FrameMaker. Currently we are just getting the system generated one.
>This is done within WebWorks Publisher with the Style/Paragraph command 
><Heading1 ID="$AUTOTAG;">
>
>Example of our output is:
>
><XML>
><ChapterTitle ID="1060635">
>   Create Sales Account
></ChapterTitle>
><Heading1 ID="1060687">
>   Purpose of this Task
></Heading1>
></XML>
>
>
>What we would like to is something like:
><XML>
><ChapterTitle ID="ChapterTitle-CreateSalesAccount">
>   Create Sales Account
></ChapterTitle>
><Heading1 ID="CreateSalesAccount-Heading1-PurposeOfThisTask">
>   Purpose of this Task
></Heading1>
></XML>
>
>
>How do we Setup Attributes for a paragraph, and then how do we use them 
>within WebWorks?
=========================================================
I seriously doubt if you can massage WWP to get the behavior you're looking
for. If the documents you're creating in FM+SGML are structured, then you
should use the built-in XML export feature, which requires that an
import/export application definition must be added to the sgmlapps file.

Also, you can't get the behavior you describe by using FrameMaker's
cross-reference feature. However You can set up your EDD and DTD to have the
required attributes for linking, but you'll have to enter the values for
those attributes manually.

To be XML-compliant, The ID attribute must be of type Unique ID and the
attribute name should be ID. The ID Ref attribute should be of type CDATA
(aka as String in the EDD), and the attribute name should be href. The ID
attribute must be included in every element that can serve as the node
(i.e., destination) for a link. The href attribute must be included in a
text-range-type element that contains the anchor text for a link (e.g., "See
Create Sales Account")

In the EDD and the DTD, the ID attribute should be optional, the href
attribute should be required, and neither attribute should be read only,
which allows authors to enter the appropriate attribute values.

For example, the A element below (a child of the Para element) is the anchor
for a link to the ChapterTitle element that contains the text "Create Sales
Account":

<ChapterTitle ID="ChapterTitle-CreateSalesAccount">
   Create Sales Account
</ChapterTitle>
        |
        |
        |
<Para Introductory text
 <A href="#id{ChapterTitle-CreateSalesAccount)" see Create Sales Account
 /A>
/Para>

The Chapter Title element above contains the value
ChapterTitle-CreateSalesAccount in the ID attribute. The href attribute in
the A element contains an X pointer that uses an absolute location term
(i.e., id()) to specify a link back to the ChapterTitle element.

If the anchor element were in a different file from the destination, then
the href attribute would have to contain the URI of the destination file,
followed by the X pointer value. For example:

<A href="http://www.adobe.com/foo.xml#id{ChapterTitle-CreateSalesAccount)"
see Create Sales Account
</A>

As I mentioned, you cannot use Frame's cross-reference capability to
automatically create the values in the ID and href attributes. The values
must be typed in.

Now, all that I have described would be required to conform to the
requirements for XML links. For those links to work, the XML would have to
be  viewed in a browser that is XLink-aware. It should also be noted that
these links do not work in the original FM+SGML structured document, because
they do not correspond to either a cross-reference link or a hypertext link.



 
     ====================
     | Nullius in Verba |
     ====================
Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory@primenet.com
10044 Adams Ave. #208, Huntington Beach, CA 92646
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