Carrying the Title of a Book forward [was Variables]

[Shlomo Perets]

Bernard,

You wrote:

>... Each file for each nation is based on the same template. In the
>template I view the master pages and in the footer/header of each page
>I place an xref to the BookName paragraph that I put into the cover.
>Then all I ever need to do is update cover.fm and update xrefs. In
>doing so I get a fully dynamic link that jumps to the cover (should I
>need that) and I also get a complete and dynamic way to update the
>title.

But when converting the FM book to on-screen PDF, all cross-references are 
converted to links (unless placed in text insets).
Thus the header/footer of each page will have "unintentional" links (which 
may even become bad links in some circumstances) -- see 
http://www.microtype.com/resources/PDFBP_links.html#UnintentionalLinks for 
real-life examples (Acrobat SDK documentation).

Additional notes:

* This is not an issue with HTML output (where master pages are ignored).

* Cross-references may also introduce difficulties related to formatting 
(eg if you have italic/bold in the title text), as in the context of 
cross-references, <$paratext> ignores all character properties present in 
the extracted paragraph text (including case formatting), except font 
family properties, superscript and subscript.

* Ideally, FrameMaker would have a "convert to link" setting in the 
cross-reference format, so that linking could be optionally  suppressed for 
specific types of cross-references.
With TimeSavers 4.0, this is an option for external cross-references (based 
on a user-defined string present in the file name or path of the target file).


Shlomo Perets

MicroType * http://www.microtype.com
FrameMaker, Acrobat training & consulting * FM-to-Acrobat TimeSavers
FM-to-PDF Assistants: Form, Navigation, Presentation, Defaults, Multimedia, 3D