Conref an Image

Report · Apr 17, 2009

Has anyone been able to successfully conref an image? If so, could you elaborate?

We are attempting to conref images so that we have single source alt text. We have created a topic that contains the images. The DITA image element has been added to an acceptable element within this document. The image is then assigned alt text and and ID. The source document is saved. We then insert a conref into the target document within an acceptable element. FM inserts a blank anchored frame and the document errors upon saving.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Report · Apr 19, 2009

I am able to create a conref to an image from one DITA document to another.

To try this, I did the following:

Created two new documents (topic1.xml & topic2.xml).
To topic2.xml, added an image element inside 'dita->topic->body->p' and specified a JPG image file.
Assigned an ID to the image element using 'DITA->Assign ID to Element' menu command.
Added the alt-text through the 'Alternate' field in the 'Object attributes' dialog (that can be opened from the Object properties dialog). Another way to add the alternate text is to add an 'alt' element inside the 'image' element, by editing the XML directly.
Saved topic2.xml.
In topic1.xml, set the IP inside 'dita->topic->body->p' element.
Used menu command 'DITA->Insert Conef' to create a conref to the image.
Chose the Source file as 'topic2.xml'. Selected 'image' from the 'Element Tag' list. Selected the image from the right side list and inserted the conref.
Conref to the image got created, without any error.

Please see if I am missing something or if you are trying to do this in some different manner. I suggest doing it this way shall definitely work.

Regards,

Tarun Garg (TG)

Adobe Certified Expert, FrameMaker

Report · Apr 20, 2009

Thank you Tarun. This is exactly how we were conref'ing the image and it inserts a blank frame with no image. It appears to be a FM bug.

After I made the original post, we decided to wrap the graphic in a uicontrol element, assign an id to the uicontrol, and conref that element instead of the image. It is a hack way to do this, but appears to be our only option.

Report · Apr 20, 2009

I did forget to mention that we are using FM version 8.0p277.

Report · Apr 20, 2009

I was trying this with FrameMaker 9. This works fine with FM9.