Re: Preserving Character Formats in Cross-Re

[Shlomo Perets <mtype@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve,

In cross-reference formats, <$paratext> indeed ignores all
character formatting present in the extracted paragraph text,
except font family properties, superscript and subscript.
These properties are retained only if implemented through 
a character tag and applied using the character catalog.

To preserve a property such as italic (or bold), you need 
to have a different font name for the required variation 
(even though visually it is the identical font). 
For example, text tagged with a character format using the
"Univers Condensed Oblique" font preserves the oblique property
when it is cross-referenced.

In my computer (without doing anything particular to achieve
this), I have several fonts where various weights are listed 
as separate fonts (eg Rockwell Light, Rockwell; Stone Serif,
Stone Serif Bold; Univers Condensed, Univers Condensed Oblique).

If you don't have the required font variation listed as a 
different font, you can use a font editing program (my favourite
one is Fontographer) to open an existing font variation,
change the font name, save it and install - you will then have 
your variation listed as a separate font.

Regards,


Shlomo Perets

MicroType
http://www.microtype.com
FrameMaker-to-Acrobat: TimeSavers / Advanced Techniques Course / Solutions





At 08:57 AM 3/4/99 -0500, you wrote (to the Framers' list):

>I have a problem for which I need a work-around, if anyone has one:
>
>1. I have a FM file containing (among other things) a series of   
>procedural steps that are cross-referenced elsewhere in a table (the   
>table is in the same file in this case). The cross-reference uses the   
><$paratext> building block to reference the text of the step. So far, so   
>good...
>
>2. This is mainframe documentation in which variables have a character   
>format called "variable" (oddly enough). The format italicizes the text.   
>For example, part of one step is: "Copy the codehlq.LOADLIB members to a   
>linklisted data set." in which the word "codehlq" is a variable, and   
>italicized.
>
>3. Cross-references do not preserve character formats, so the text in the   
>table is all normal text, and there is no way to go in and make this   
>single word have the variable character attribute/format.
>
>Short of converting it back to text, does anyone have any ideas?
>
>Note: Someone is bound to come back and suggest placing the character   
>format name in angle brackets (<variable>) in the cross-reference format   
>definition. That does not work in this case; it would change the entire   
>text... hope I am saving someone some typing!



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