weird symbols in front of my Chapter Titles

[Fred Ridder]

Deirdre Reagan wrote:
 
>I tested this out. In my TOC, all my Chapter Titles have the little
> white box in front of them, and all my chapter subsections (1., a.,
> etc) have a T in front of them. All work as hyperlinks.
> 
> In the actual chapter, the Chapter Title with a T or a little white
> box in front of it doesn't not work as a hyperlink.
> 
> All TOC hyperlinks connected to all chapters, regardless of whether
> the chapter had a symbol.
> 
> None of the chapters with the symbol hyperlinked to anywhere.
> 
> So I'm left with the question -- why are these symbols appearing at
> the begining of some of my chapter titles, in the actual chapter.
> 
> I'd like to delete the symbols out of the Chapter Title in the actual
> chapters (not from the TOC) and see what happens, but so far I've been
> unsuccessful in finding any way to delete them.
 
The T symbols you keep referring to are the on-screen display of 
FrameMaker's markers. The thing you have to realize is that there are
many different types of markers, each of which are used in very different
ways for different purposes. Some markers (Index markers) contain 
the text of index entries. Some markers (Hypertext markers) contain 
hypertext commands. Some markers (Cross-reference markers) identify
the "target" of a cross-reference. Some markers encapsulate chunks of
content that have conditionalized with a condition tag that is set to
be hidden. But the point is that markers don't just appear for no reason.
They only exist because you explicitly created them (e.g. for an index 
entry) or because you used some feature that is implemented via markers.
 
The whole point of this explanation is to say that you should *NEVER* 
delete a marker unless you know exactly why it exists and are completely
certain that it is no longer needed. If you go around deleting markers 
just because you don't understand what they are there for, you will be
breaking some feature of the document that you probably want to keep.
The most common example of this is breaking cross-references by deleting
the target markers.
 
The problem is that it can be difficult to examine markers because they
are zero-width characters (so that they don't upset line lengths and 
pagination when they are dislayed) and you can have several (or even
dozens of them) stacked up in one spot. If you select the whole stack,
the Marker dialog only displays the properties of the topmost marker, 
and selecting only an individual marker is difficult. You can see if there 
are multiple markers in one location by observing how the insertion point 
moves when you use the forward or back cursor key to move over 
the marker(s). If it takes multiple strokes of the cursor key to move 
over the on-screen marker symbol (i.e. from the following text to the 
preceding text or vice versa), there is a stack of two or more markers
in that spot. If you're careful, you can use the Shift key along with the
cursor keys to select the individual markers, but the easier approach
may be to temporarily insert spaces between the markers to spread
them out on the line and make them individually selectable.
 
Anyway, in your particualr situation, the markers in the TOC are most
likely hypertext markers to link the entries to the corresponting headings
in the book; these markers are regenerated each time you generate 
or update the TOC; you'll only be able to delete them (thereby destroying
the hyperlinking of the TOC) temporarily. The markers in the heading 
paragraphs are most likely to be some combination of index markers
and cross-reference markers. If they are the former, deleting them will
destroy index entries; if they are the latter, deleting them will create
unresolved cross-references. 
 
-FR