RE:Structured Conversion Table and Cross-References (moderately long)

["Giuseppe Bonelli" <giuseppe.bonelli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,
I have found the message included at the bottom while googling and I
reply to the list since the original address is hidden in the archives.

Any comment will be very much appreciated as this is a much frustrating
aspect in an otherwise excellent structured FM experience.

We have setup a very satisfactory workflow for converting legacy FM
content to XML using FM7 conversion tables, but we were not able to
automate the conversion of cross references (both internal and
external).

Here is what we do. If there is a better solution, PLEASE let me know.

1. Prepare as usual the conversion table, the EDD, the rule file and the
DTD;
2. Convert to structured FM "en-masse" or on a per file basis;
3. Validate the structured docs. Usually everything is OK, apart from
the xrefs (see below)
4. Export to xml

In the conversion table we use the following rules to structure the
xref:
Unstructured tag-->structured element
X:	xref
M:Cross-Ref	mark[type="crossRef"]

In the EDD we have the following rules:
Element (Marker): mark
Attribute list
Name: Id 	Unique ID 	Optional
Name: type 	String 	Optional

Element (CrossReference): xref
Attribute list
Name: Idref 	ID Reference 	Optional
Name: format 	String 	Optional

Here is the structured xref problem
It appears that during conversion FM does NOT update the uniqueId's
values since the target of the cross refs are paragraphs tag and not
elements.

Our (labor intensive) solution
After converting to structured, we manually relink all cross refs to the
corresponding marker element which has been defined in the conversion
table and EDD. Doing so, FM adds the right Id/Idref values.

To have FM content that validate against the EDD we have also to delete
the Ids used by unstructuredFM to keep track of the link (these are
leftovers from the conversion process and are usually not unique in a
document instance).

This works for "internal" xref (i.e., those within the same file). For
cross-document links we need and extra element (say xrefExt) with an
attribute specifing the name of the external file in such a way we can
automatically postprocess the xml files to reconstruct the cross
document links.

All this is in FM7.0. I have been told tha FM7.1 resolves some xref
issues, but I didn't had yet the occasion to test it. Any experience
here on this list ?

As you can see, everithing works very well, BUT the crossRef problem
make it impossible to have a fully automated process, wich would be
obviously very attractive.

Obviously, this issue applies only to legacy content and my advice is to
_always_ use elements (NOT paragraphs) for cross linking any new FM
content.

I would be very happy to share any experience.

have a nice day,
__peppo

>From: "Steve Haley" <shaley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 09:49:07 -0500
>Delivered-to: jeremyg-freeframers:org-ffarchiv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Importance: Normal
>Sender: owner-framers@xxxxxxxxx
>
>I'm testing the conversion table approach to migrate legacy Frame
>documents to XML.  I'm getting decent results, except I can't find a
way
>to preserve any cross-document cross-referencing information whatsoever
>when exporting to XML, even when structuring/exporting at the book
>level.
>
>Any ideas or experiences to share?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Steve Haley


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