How to select a cross-ref marker and apply condition to it?

[Guest]

Hi,

I've found a couple of relevant topics from this froum, and tried to select the marker using the technique (turn on text symbol, use mouse to hover the marker) but can't do it. All I selected is the character right behind the marker but not the marker itself, can anyone help?

Thank you!

[Guest]

I use the keyboard arrow keys while holding the Shift key (on Windows). For example, if the marker is at the beginning of a line of text, I press the Home key (usually multiple times to make sure the cursor is truly before the marker), and then hold down the right arrow and press Shift. If the first character after the marker becomes highlighted after pressing the arrow key a couple times, it means I pressed it one too many times, and I press the left arrow key to deselect the first character. The marker should then be selected.

Hope that helps,

Smitty

[Guest]

Thank you so much for the quick response. It works!

Now, when I open Special->Marker dialog box with the marker selected, the Marker Text section is empty, where a number, the source paragraph tag and the source paragraph text are supposed to appear, did I do anything wrong when I created this cross-ref?

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

Sorry, have to go for the day. LMK if you can't figure it out, but seems like you may have multiple markers selected, or have deselected.

Try on a blank doc to troubleshoot.

[Bob_Niland]

> ... the Marker Text section is empty ...

It is not uncommon for markers (and other anchors) to "pile up" at the same inter-character position in a line. It is also relatively easy to create an empty marker.

When I suspect this,, I'll first, turn on all Conditions, and set Color Views so that I can see everything. Then I move a character or two to the left of the marker pile with the cursor. Type [->] (some wide character, followed by a right arrow operation), until I've passed the marker pile. The markers and anchors are now all individually selectable.

You can also put the cursor ahead of the pile and use Find -> Any Marker or -> Marker of Type and repeated [ Find ] ops, with the Marker dialog up.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Just to make them even more visible, I created several character tags for my marker types that have different colours applied to them and larger font sizes, so when I create a marker and apply its character tag, it really stands out on the line.

[Bob_Niland]

Marker overload hasn't gotten to the point here where color-tagging them would be worth the effort, but I could see doing that if I were using Custom Marker types.

Part of why I don't yet need to color them is because I use marker relocation. Many FM users assume that a marker has to be located at the start of a paragraph, because that's what FM does by default on Xref or Index marker insertion. Not so.

Xref markers can be relocated to any point in the paragraph.

Index markers can be made to reside elsewhere than start of word/phrase, simply by doing so. When you highlight text for IX marker, that's not defining a hypertext region, it's merely a convenience Copy into the IX dialog. If you start at, say, the 2nd character, that's where the marker is inserted, and yes, you have to type the leading character by hand into the dialog - but you often need to edit that anyway, if, for example, you are using a convention that all IX content is lower case (since FM doesn't merge case in IX).

Hypertext markers can also be other than at start of term or phrase, but do need to be inside the Character Format that was applied to delimit the HT region.

I also don't put frame anchors at end of para. I put them beside a wide character in the line nearest the frame (which is usually the first line of a para, using out typical right-run-in anchored frames, or somewhere inside the last line for a frame-below). This makes the anchor easy to find, and keeps it from obscuring EOL punctuation. Caution - putting anchors inside words risks problems at spell check. FM apparently treats an anchor as a delimiter. Putting it ahead of the "s" in a plural usually causes no problems.

So in our content, most markers and anchors are isolated, and when we see one that is not at start of para, we know it's one created by an author, and not by FM, and it's easy to select when there's also an FM-created marker in the same para (such as a TOC Xref marker at start).

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I stumbled on the technique on the framers list when I was first learning FM to help me keep my marker types separate and visible when editing - I also use the trick of spreading them out on lines - one specific type always goes at the front of the heading, an index type in the middle (careful not to insert it inside a word), and a further type at the very end.

[Guest]

Thank you all for the feedback. Now I'm loaded with all the good stuff I need . Really appreciated!

[Winfried Reng]

When text needs to be translated, markers in words or between words of a sentence will split your segment.

Example: Press<marker> OK to start the process. (<marker> would be the marker which you had inserted.)

If the marker contains text which must be translated (e.g. index marker) the translator will get:

First segment: Press

Second segment: text in your marker

Third segment: OK to start the process.

What should the translator now do? Write the translation of the whole sentence into the first segment?

Or into the third? What if he wrote the translation into the first segment and you have a similar sentence "Press<marker> Cancel to abort the process".

The "Press" segment is identical to the of your other sentence. It will get replaced by the incorrect translation.

Very dangerous. Reusing translations does not work.

Translation memory systems have options to move markers to the start or end of a segment. However, you do not know whether your translation agency uses this option.

Therefore it's good practice to keep markers and anchored frames always at the very beginning or end of a paragraph.

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

Use the Find/Change command to find a Marker of Type: Cross-reference. This will select your markers one at a time