system variables inside a user variable?

[Steve Rickaby]

At 12:03 -0400 13/6/07, Brian.Darold at sage.com wrote:

>Is it possible to put building blocks inside a user variable? Ideally I'd
>like to create a variable named CurrentYear that contains only the <$year>
>building block. For reasons unknown, I'd like to do this without modifying
>or using the existing current date, modification date, or creation date
>variables.

Sadly, no, because <$year> is a sort of meta building block. If you look at the current date (long), modification date (long) and creation date (long) system variables, for example, you'll see that they all use <$year>, but it's just a placeholder to fish out the relevant part of the relevant date from FrameMaker's document data.

A user variable containing '<$year>' will appear in the text as '<$year>'. Well, actually, this is not quite true, as it appears in the text as '<$year'. I am sure that there is a good reason for this, but I have no idea what it is.

You can, as you observe, edit the definitions of the system variables, but it seems that you don't want to do this. One feels one ought to be able to create new system variables: I expect someone has put this on a FrameMaker wish list at some stage.

-- 
Steve