RE: Figure numbers - in the flow or in the frame?

["Ridder, Fred" <Fred.Ridder@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Many people who use captioned or titled figures in FrameMaker
find it advantageous to embed the anchored frame inside a single-
cell table to take advantage of the title management features of
FrameMaker tables. You would simply define a new table format
that uses a different paragraph tag for the title than regular tables.
This new title tag would be defined to provide the labeling and 
numbering you want in its autonumbering format; you'd use a 
different, named autonumbering series to keep the figures 
independent of the tables.

A side benefit of this approach is that by redefining the format 
of the special table that holds your figures, you can position the 
title/caption/figure number either above or below the figure itself.
In our printed guides, we generally locate figure captions below 
the figure, but are able to put it above the figure before HTML
conversion so that when you follow a cross-reference the 
figure will be visible in the browser window (browsers normally
display the target of a hyperlink at the top of the window, and
if your caption is below the figure the figure itself will be off the
top of the screen).

My opinions only; I don't speak for Dialogic or Intel...
Fred Ridder (Fred.Ridder@Dialogic.com)
Senior Publishing System Analyst
Dialogic, an Intel company
Parsippany, NJ



-----Original Message-----
From: Russ Wyllie [mailto:russ.wyllie@propel.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 1:48 PM
To: 'framers@omsys.com'
Subject: Figure numbers - in the flow or in the frame?


I've recently returned to using FrameMaker after a few years away. A
template that I've set up includes figure numbering, something I have not
used in FrameMaker very much.

I set up the template so that writers can simply apply a "Figure" paragraph
format in the main flow of the document, and then anchor the graphic
anywhere within this "Figure" paragraph. It seemed like a good and easy way
to go.

One of the writers commented that at a previous company, their template
setup had the figure number inside the anchored frame instead of in the main
text flow. This approach would have the advantage that the anchored frame
could then be set to float away from the precise location and improve
pagination. (When the "Figure" paragraph is in the main flow, the anchored
frame must stay with the paragraph so that they are together.)

However, having the figure number inside the anchored frame might cause
consistency problems; the placement of the Figure number might creep around
a little and be inconsistent, even if I provide a boilerplate anchored frame
on the reference page that users could copy/paste.

So I'm curious what people think. Is it better to place figure numbers in
the main flow or in the anchored frame itself? Thanks for your opinions.

-Russ

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