External cross-refs in XML

["Thomas Michanek" <thomas.michanek@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm using FM 7.0p576 on Windows 2000.

I've been experimenting with creating XML equivalents
to cross-references in FM. Is the following possible?
(I need a fairly quick response without having to
spend too much time experimenting or taking a course.)

I'm working with a set of XML files that need to have
links between them. XML is the storage format, so FM7
is only used as an XML editor in this case.

In XML, these links are expressed with an element whose
attributes specifies the name of the linked XML file and
the textual content of the linked heading element, e.g.
<link file = "a.xml" heading = "Introduction">link text</link>
That's the way it is, and it may be difficult to change it.
The XML files are post-processed to create actual links.

Of course, this is cumbersome to work with in FM. Instead,
I'd like to use FM cross-references between the elements
in the different files, and use R/W rules to create the
required XML element and attributes as shown above. I've
tried to set up cross-ref elements with IDREF attributes, etc.

My first hurdle seem to be that FM exports the cross-refs
as text if the reference is to another file. Is this always
true, or is there any way around it without using the FDK?

Is it feasible to create *external* cross-refs while in FM,
that are exported to XML elements and attributes, and then
correctly re-translated to the same working cross-refs
when the XML file is opened later? No book file is used in
FM, and .fm is not the storage format.

Thanks in advance,

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Thomas Michanek, FrameMaker/UNIX/MIF expert
Technical Communicator, Uppsala, Sweden
mailto:Thomas.Michanek@telia.com
http://go.to/framers/
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