DITA conversion and cross-ref IDs

[Jeremy H. Griffith]

On Mon, 09 Dec 2013 11:00:50 +1300, "rebecca officer" <rebecca.officer at alliedtelesis.co.nz> wrote:

>We're currently in the process of converting from 
>Unstructured FrameMaker files to DITA using FrameMaker 11. 
>The engineer who's working on the conversion has a 
>question about cross-references. When he structures 
>the document using the conversion table, he'd like to 
>be able to save the Idref value for the cross-reference 
>as an attribute in the element it is wrapped in. At the 
>moment, when he structures the document, all he can 
>manage is to wrap the text in a <xref> element.

That's just one of hundreds of problems you will have
trying to use the conversion table method.  It's grossly
inadequate.  Links, graphics, tables... it's a long list.

>If anyone's got any ideas about how to do this - or about 
>how else to avoid having to manually re-create thousands 
>of cross-refs - I'd be really grateful! The engineer's 
>happy with scripting, esp Python, so it doesn't have to 
>be a purely FM solution.

Um, you already *have* Mif2Go.  We spent quite a few
engineer-years working with DITA TC members on many
large conversion projects (including IBM's) to get it
right.  And to make it as easy as possible.  This has
actually become the second-biggest use case for Mif2Go
(the biggest is still conversion to Word).  Save
yourself a BIG bundle of time and money, and use it.

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  <jeremy at omsys.com>    http://mif2go.com/