[Framers] Linking to a paragraph

[Bertrand Meyer]

Is there a way to create a link to a paragraph in the same document?

 

In the list of possible destinations I see page numbers, but that is not
good, since page boundaries move around and in fact I need finer-grain
targets.

 

I just want to select a paragraph and create a link to it. Not a
cross-reference; at least I don't see how to do this with a cross-reference,
since a cross-reference has a format which depends on the target paragraph,
not the source paragraph. What I need is links in sentences such as 

 

                first prepare a chili sauce, then a Peach Melba, then mix
them

 

where "chili sauce" and "Peach Melba" are underlined, and are links going to
the corresponding destinations. Each of these destinations is a paragraph in
the document.

 

This is very easy to do for URLs (Hypertext: message URL http://whatever, I
have been doing this for years) but paradoxically I don't see a simple
equivalent for intra-document links. Maybe I am missing something obvious.

 

The alternative that I can use now is to add destinations explicitly: in the
chili sauce paragraph add a marker

 

                newlink chili sauce

 

and at the point of the link add a marker

 

                gotolink chili sauce

 

This works but does not scale up: I will have hundreds, in fact several
thousands, of such links; it is an enormous waste of time to have to type
"newlink P" for each one of them and "gotolink P" for each reference, when
each of these "P" is already a paragraph. I would like to do as with
cross-references: be presented with a list of the existing paragraphs and
select one of them.

 

I do see a workaround: I have looked at the generated MIF and see where
exactly the "newlink P" and "gotolink P" appear. Since my target paragraphs
are all of one specific paragraph type, I can write a script that massages
the MIF and inserts at least a "newlink P" for every P of that type. But
this is a heavy-artillery solution, and means I must regenerate the MIF,
close the document, run the script and go back to FrameMaker after each
significant change. If there is a way to achieve the result through the
normal UI I would like to know about it.

 

I am using FrameMaker 15, although the question seems version-independent.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

-- Bertrand Meyer