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If anyone is wondering what this looks like, you see those numbers circled in red in the bookmarks panel? Those are the <$chapnum> variables that are supposed to be invisible in the text (and are) but they are showing up in the bookmarks, where I definitely don't want them and where they were never showing up before.
The only difference I can determine between the document where it still works and the new document where it doesn't is that the document where it works uses Frame's pre-defined color of White for the character tag and the new one uses a color definition I created which is a duplicate of White except for the name.
Guess I'll put it back to White and delete the custom color. Seems odd that one would work and the other wouldn't when every single setting is identical.
I don't know what to tell you, Stef. I agree that, logically, the number is there in the tag and it should show up in the bookmarks panel. But if it's a bug that the numbers don't show up in the bookmarks panel when the color is White, I don't want it fixed!
This is the house style that was established long before I was hired. I don't like it, but I have no choice in the matter. We're unlikely to ever move out of unstructured, though, unless our company grows by an order of magnitude and/or the techwriting department does. There's only two of us.
This is how the heading in question appears in the document.
If I want to see the section number preceding the name of the section in an xref, I have the choice of inserting two separate xrefs (which annoys the hell out of me), or I can add autonumbering to the text part of the section title that is "invisible", which is what I've done, to give me this:
If Adobe "fixes" this in the future, I guess I'll have to go to the "insert 2 xrefs to the same damn place" strategy or edit all the bookmarks once the PDF is created. I don't really like either choice.
xref format in question:
There are screenshots of both the paragraph and character tags shown above.
I did copy and paste the text from the bookmark into a Notepad file. No number showed up.
Hi linsims​,
thanks, this was very helpful. I think we have found the cause of the "confusion" now.
Because: What you show here, is a completely different scenario:
This is how the heading in question appears in the document:
Xref in some other place:
xref format in question:
This scenario is, of course, working in the way you expect it and it is so to say "best practice". I would do it the same way:
The heading "Monitoring Battery Health" has just this text (without a number (and from your screenshot, I doubt there is a "hidden one")) and in the xref you are referring to this heading with the definition "<xref>Section <$chapnum>, <$paratext><Default ¶ Font>".
Result: The PDF bookmark will just show "Monitoring Battery Health" (without a number) and the xrefs shows additionally "Section 6", because you have definied that in the xref definition.
My hunch here is, that the change in behavior you noticed, comes from what you started to do differently recently: Now you started to add the chapter number in the heading itself and then tried to "hide" it. But in the scenario, you showed here now, there is no need for that. Just don't put the chapter number in the headings. You can pull them into the xref exactly like you have it there already: "<xref>Section <$chapnum>, <$paratext><Default ¶ Font>".
By the way, I have just tested this on my machine, and I cannot reproduce the effect of "Numbers formatted with FM internal color 'White' do not show up in Bookmarks". Independent of the color, the numbers always show up in the bookmark as they should. So, there is no bug.
More confusion! But your comment has actually opened my eyes to something, so ...
In most places I've worked, you'd see the chapter title formatted on one line as "Chapter #: Chapter Title". But where I work now, the chapter # (Section 6) and the chapter title (Monitoring Battery Health) are on separate lines with different tags.
In those earlier jobs, we weren't using the <$chapnum> variable, we used <n> in a single compound series for resetting various counters. In this job, I designed the formats to use <$chapnum> and I'm not using a single series but multiple ones (it's a whole saga, but it's the only way to reset some counters), but I was so accustomed to using a single series with embedded counter resets that despite substituting in <$chapnum>, I thought there needed to be an autonumber associated with the H1 Heading 1 tag in order for the chapter number to show up in the xref.
That screen shot doesn't show a number on the line containing "Monitoring Battery Health", but in fact the tag associated with Monitoring Battery Health does have autonumbering and always did (see the screenshot for the H1 Heading 1 tag in an earlier post). It's just in a 2-point font that's colored White, so of course it isn't visible on the screenshot. 
And as long as the font was White and not my custom color, it also didn't show up in the bookmarks panel.
Now I realize that using <$chapnum> in the xref definition means I don't need to have an autonumber in the H1 Heading 1 tag for the xref to pick up, so it's all good. And that also means I can clean up similar tags I have for Figure Captions. Yay! Simplification is good!
I'm curious, though, that it's not doing for you what it does for me. Because I promise you, it does this for me. It really does.
This screen shot shows the bookmark panel from a book that was generated from three files that are identical except that the character tag applied to the autonumbering information for H1 Heading 1 in the first file is set to use White for the font color and background (as highlighted), and the same tag in the next two files is set to use the zhidden numbers color. First file, no number. Next two, numbers.
Is there any chance at all that it's an Acrobat setting? I have never dug into Acrobat settings. If you like, I can send you the 3 files and the book file and the PDF, along with a PDF that shows how all the tags are used.
Okay, now I got you. It was not clear to me, that you are talking about paragraph autonumbering. You were just writing in your posts:
For purposes of creating xrefs, I have added "hidden" numbers at the end of several paragraph tags.
and
Those are the <$chapnum> variables (…)
which made me think, you had manually added a chapnum variable in the text itself at the end of a pgf. However, I now understood, that you are talking about the autonumbering feature with autonumbering set to position "End of paragraph".
Now I can also reproduce your issue. It does not matter if the autonumbering is at the end or at the start of a paragraph. As soon as you assign a character style to it with the font color set to FM's internal color "White", the numbering does not appear in the bookmark. Interesting. And from my point of view a bug, although I guess it was explicitly made like this some long time ago for a specific reason.
However, it's clearly something that would need to be fixed. I do not see, why an autonumbering with color "White" should not go into the bookmarks, while all other colors do.
Especially not, as it's a totally valid construction that I can perfectly imagine being used, like in this example, that I have just created:
But anyway: As we have figured out now, for the specific purpose you need to address you can just use FM's internal color "White" for now to get the effect you want to have (autonumbering not showing in bookmark). However, you do not need this construction of a "hidden autonumbering" anyway as we have also worked out (→ chapnum in xref definition):
Now I realize that using <$chapnum> in the xref definition means I don't need to have an autonumber in the H1 Heading 1 tag for the xref to pick up, so it's all good. And that also means I can clean up similar tags I have for Figure Captions. Yay! Simplification is good!
That's the way to go. It's a more stable and more "best practice" / "common use" construction. And more future proof, considering that "White autonumbering not appearing in PDF bookmarks" is a bug.
Arnis: I still use Save as PDF. Old habits, y'know?
Amitoj: The color view is the same in both Sherlock 1 and Sherlock 2. White is set to Cutout, zhidden_numbers is set to Invisible. The autonumbering does not appear in the text in either case (desired). The zhidden_numbers color definition is identical to FrameMaker's definition for White.
For Section 1: Sherlock, the character tag uses White for both Color and Background and does not appear in the bookmarks panel. (desired)
For Section 2: Sherlock (also Section 3), the character tag uses zhidden_numbers for both Color and Background and does show up in the bookmarks panel. (very much not desired)
Technically, I suppose, it is a bug that the autonumbering in Section 1 doesn't show up in the bookmarks panel, but since that's what I wanted I can't complain about it.
I'm not sure if it's a bug that the autonumbering is showing up in the bookmarks panel when the color view defines the custom color as Invisible and the color definition defines the color as Don't Print, though. Personally I'd say yes, because if I don't want it visible in the text, then I also don't want it visible in the bookmarks. YMMV.
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