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

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

I discovered that the problem I reported yesterday is almost non
exixtent as the only broken crossRefs are the external ones. I didn't
notice that and I therefore assumed (wrongly) that something was broken
in FM.

According to the adobe docs, FM7.1 should resolve the remaining cross
references issue regarding the cross documents structured links.

Thanks to Peter who pointed me in the right direction.

In case someone is having problems in structuring cross references, I'll
be happy to give the details of the conversion.

__peppo

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Giuseppe Bonelli [mailto:giuseppe.bonelli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: martedì 30 novembre 2004 16.39
> To: framers@xxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE:Structured Conversion Table and Cross-References
> (moderately
> long)
>
>
> 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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