Re: framers-digest V1 #673

[Chris Despopoulos <cud@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I developed an FDK plugin that maintained unique IDs.  It's bigger than 
a bread-box, I might add.  

The problem is not unusual - you have a doc database, and you use 
Maker+SGML to create doc subsets.  And of course, you need to have xrefs 
that will work once you pull all the subsets together in a specific doc 
instance.  But Maker can't ensure unique IDs across files.

We had a utility that tracked serial numbers, and used these for the IDs 
of specific elements that were defined to be one-of-a kind for each sub 
doc.  All children of these special elements had the serialnumber as a 
prefix to their IDs.  I have heard of people using filenames as a prefix 
as well.  Then we let Maker assign the ID value postfix.  This got us 
unique IDs.

How did we get Maker to assign the post-fix?  Just let Maker create the 
attr val, then modify the result.  Exact details may vary depending on 
your specific situation.  Just having all these files in a book seems 
suspect to me if you think that will force Maker to give unique ID vals 
across all components.  I believe you still have the same problem - 
putting the files in a book doesn't change that.  (But I could be wrong...)

Where it got hairy was dealing with cut/copy/paste, move, delete, 
ad-nauseum user functions...  What do you do in each case?  But in the 
end we got something that worked rather well - at least the final end 
users haven't complained or reported any bugs.

I suspect that writing up a utility to convert legacy xrefs to use the 
new IDs would not be rocket science.  If you want more detail about the 
fun I had with this, contact me offline.

Cheers                  cud


** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@omsys.com **
** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **