Adding a DITA element to footer

[mattl84896954]

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?

[mattl84896954]

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.

[Lynne A. Price]

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

[DLindsay]

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.

[mattl84896954]

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.