Cross-reference oddity in FM 9

[Shlomo Perets]

Rene,

You wrote:

>Schlomo, I think I'm missing something or doing it wrong. I'm
>attaching an updated Sample.FM.  I changed the font family for Italic
>char tag to HelveticaNeueLT Std Cn, since that's the most similar font
>to Arial Narrow that  I have installed on this PC. It shows fine in
>the variable definition, but when the variable is used in the heading,
>and then the heading text is xref'd via <$paratext>, it is still not
>picking up the angle. I don't understand why it works for you, but I'm
>not getting the desired result. Is it a bug in my FM file or
>something?

Rebecca's clarification is correct -- you need a font where the italic 
variation is part of the font identity/name itself (i.e. Italic/Oblique 
appears in the Family field in the Character Designer).

If you don't currently have such a font in your font list, it is possible 
to define one of the existing fonts like that through maker.ini.

>{Aside: It seems to me that either Adobe might want to consider adding
>another building block that does include the character formats applied
>to text for cross-references, so that writers have the choice of which
>standard to follow; or perhaps this is a limitation that doesn't exist
>in FM 10?}

The behavior you see, as well as the workaround, apply to all versions of 
FrameMaker (including FM10).

Notice that in the context of generated files, <$paratext> retains all 
character formatting if they are the result of a character tag (untagged 
font properties are not retained) -- so your Product Name variable will be 
displayed properly in the TOC without any change to its current definition.


Shlomo Perets

MicroType, http://www.microtype.com
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