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Question

Frame to MIF to Frame to MIF to Frame

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
April 17, 2013
2 replies
2451 views

What happens when you have cross references from one chapter to another and save those fm 11 chapters as mifs, which get converted to fm and edited in an earlier version fm 7, then saved as mifs, and then are opened again in fm 11 with the rest of the chapters in the book?

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Arnis Gubins

Inspiring

Other than a convoluted workflow, nothing much should happen unless you move the files around between folders. In that case, you would break the cross-refs.

What also might occur is that if some special symbols or characters are used, they may show up incorrectly, as ?? or some other symbols at the end of the round-tripping. FM11 uses unicode encoding while FM7 uses the old FrameRoman encoding.

M

mellon89Author

Participating Frequently

Have seen the ?? and others as part of going back and forth.
Only a few files are edited in FM7 and then passed back to be dropped back in the folder where the FM11 files and book are located.

A

Art_Campbell1

Inspiring

Be sure to let us know when you find out. ;- )

My best guess would be that if no one mucks with the CRs in 7, they'll be

intact. FM is supposed to ignore contents in the MIF that it doesn't

understand. So the 11 CRs should pass through 7 and back into 11 intact. In

theory. And assuming the files all end up in the same book and they're all

in the same relative path as when they started.

If I were you, I'd try to eliminate the problem by getting the 7 site or

writer upgraded, even temporarily, with an 11 eval.

Art Campbell

art.campbell@gmail.com

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a redheaded girl." -- Richard Thompson

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M

mellon89Author

Participating Frequently

In this case many of the CR's are updated in FM7, which is where I believe the problem starts.

Arnis Gubins

Inspiring

Arnis,
Thank you. That is definitely good information to know (re: realtive and absolute link creation).

In this case I'm using FM11 on my machine, saving as MIFs and sending to a colleague using FM7 on another machine. He then sends me back the edited files in MIF. All files on both machines are in one folder (essentially no path difference bethween the files and the cross references).

W.R.T. best cross reference preservation:

Question 1: Should he edit the MIF files or 1st save as FM files and then edit.

Question 2: Does/should he need to save the files as MIF before sending back to me, or can FM11 open FM7 files in FM format?

BR,

Clint

Clint,

It doesn't matter what format is edited or saved. MIF is the human readable ASCII version of the internal FM database. When FM has opened a file, it is all in the internal binary format that FM is working with. The only difference is when saving the file. Saving as MIF goes through a very specific process, so accidental inclusion of cruft (such as may come in from a Word copy & paste) in the binary gets stripped out when saved as MIF.

If, as you say, all of the files are in the same folder, then there shouldn't be any issues with cross-references (other than the use of unicode characters) between FM versions.

Nothing has changed in the FM cross-ref mechanism in a very long time, so I really don't understand the concern about cross-reference preservation. Are you encountering specific cross-ref errors in this FM11 > FM7 > FM11 workflow roundtripping? If so, what specifically are the issues?

FM11 should be able to open the binary versions (.fm) files, so it shuldn't matter if the files are returned as .fm or .mif.

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