Re: Translating Cross-references from Frame to xml

["Lynne A. Price" <lprice@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sue,
  There's some confusion in the way "external" is used. In general, 
discussions of FM xrefs use the term "external cross-reference" to
refer to a cross-reference from one FM document to another, while
"internal cross-reference" means a cross-reference from one FM
document to a location somewhere in the same FM document.
  In fact, there are really three cases to consider to understand
XML export:

a) Xrefs where the source element (i.e., the cited element) is in
   the same FM document as the xref

b) Xrefs where the source element and the xref are in different
   book components of a book that is being saved to XML

c) Xrefs where the source element and the xref are in different
   FM documents and the current save operation does not export
   the former

  The word "internal" clearly applies to case a) and "external" to
case c).  While b) is external in the FM sense I defined in the first
paragraph, it is internal to the current export. 
  Ideally, when you save a document to XML, xrefs will be exported
as elements with an ID reference attribute identifying the cross-reference
source. In case c), the ID reference attribute alone is insufficient
to do so. An element for the xref would have to identify the document
containing the source element, as well as its unique ID. If that source
document has also been saved to XML, it would be nice if the xref
element provides the name of the XML document rather than that of the
original FM document. However, there's no way for FM to know if that
second export has taken place (or will). It therefore gives up and
exports xrefs in category c) as text. If you want elements for such
xrefs, use the FDK to define your own conventions for identifying the
document containing the element. Cases a) and b), though, should
export as elements.
	--Lynne
  

 

At 02:01 PM 11/21/02 -0500, Mitchell, Sue wrote:
>In the Structure Dev Guide it says that the default translation of an
>'external' cross-reference is to export the cross reference as text:
>
>If the cross-reference source is external to the file when exporting a
>single file or external
>to the book when exporting a book, then FrameMaker exports the
>cross-reference as text.
>
>I don't understand why this is so. If we are using Frame as our XML editor
>this means that we need to import and export the whole book each time we
>want to edit one file if we have any cross references between chapters and
>don't want to lose them. Is there a simple way of over-riding this feature?
>Or do I have to use the API? 


Lynne A. Price
Text Structure Consulting, Inc.
Specializing in FrameMaker+SGML consulting and training
lprice@txstruct.com
http://www.txstruct.com
voice/fax: (510) 583-1505
cell phone: (510) 421-2284


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