Read/write rules question - retaining markup attribute

[Lynne A. Price]

At 09:13 AM 10/19/2006, Daniel Osborn wrote:
>    If you use the is fm property rule to translate a markup attribute to
>a FrameMaker property, the markup attribute does not also appear as a
>FrameMaker attribute.
>
>My question is, is there a way to do this so that the markup attribute
>does appear as a attribute of the element in Frame. I'd like to keep
>this value so I can test it in the edd and format the text in the table
>accordingly.

Daniel,
   Why do you want to do so? The information is stored in both the FM and 
XML representations of the document.  As you've described, when you open an 
XML document, FM uses the attribute value to set the table format. When you 
save the FM document to XML, FM will export an attribute.
   If you map the XML attribute to an FM attribute, there's no way to keep 
the table format in synch with the attribute value. When you insert a new 
table in a document, the Insert Table dialog box will appear, allowing you 
to select a table format. Short of a plug-in or FrameScript, there's no way 
to ensure that the selected table format is the same as an attribute value. 
Furthermore, you can always change the format of an existing table within 
FM. Again, there's no way to validate that you've changed an attribute 
value as well.
   Nevertheless, if you really want to do so, you might be able to use the 
rule:

      attribute "otherprops" {
         is fm property table format;
         is fm attribute;
         }

If this does work (and I don't have time to test it now), I suspect the 
actual table format rather than the attribute value is used on export.

         --Lynne


Lynne A. Price
Text Structure Consulting, Inc.
Specializing in structured FrameMaker consulting, application development, 
and training
lprice at txstruct.com            http://www.txstruct.com
voice/fax: (510) 583-1505      cell phone: (510) 421-2284