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mattl84896954
mattl84896954
Known Participant
Sep 4, 2018 8:26 PM UTC
Question

Adding a DITA element to footer

I may be getting the terms wrong, but I am wondering if it's possible to insert an element in the footer or a FrameMaker template. I would like if possible to have my document number pull from the ditamap, rather than having to manually override the the document number in the master page of my template file. Is it not possible to add a reference or a variable to the footer, then have it populate from content stored in the ditamap?

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4 replies

DLindsay
DLindsay
Inspiring
Oct 31, 2018 4:55 PM UTC

My current solution to this is to store an fm file containing the variables that I want the book to use for title, version, release date, etc., and then use import>formats>variables only to apply this to all elements in the book as a step during publication.

This method just uses FM variables, not DITA unfortunately, and I would prefer to pull directly from the DITAMAP like you describe, but I haven't found a way yet.

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mattl84896954
mattl84896954Author
Known Participant
Nov 1, 2018 10:45 PM UTC

Thanks for the suggestions. I am glad I'm not the only one kicking this can around. I'm still learning about all the little tweaks needed to best publish DITA out of FrameMaker. The key is not to introduce too many native FrameMaker features that are not DITA compatible.

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    mattl84896954
    mattl84896954Author
    Known Participant
    Sep 12, 2018 4:08 PM UTC

    Hoping to give this a bump. I think there may be a way to call an attribute in the footer, but not sure. I imagine there must be a way of doing this. Template files should hold variable and references, not manually inserted text.

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    Lynne A. Price
    Inspiring
    Sep 12, 2018 4:53 PM UTC

    Matt,

        Running H/F variables can use the <$attribute[attname]> building block, but that only allows a file to reference an element in the current file.

           --Lynne

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