Retain Xrefs when Stripping Structure from a Document?

[Guest]

We're using framemaker 7.1 or 7.2. I've used xslt to generate structured fm documents for a client. The EDD maps elements to the clients template styles. The crossreference elements generated by my system are something like <xref xrefid="targetid" format="fmformat" srcfile="filename.fm#targetid"/>. The client then wants to strip structure and end up with the unstructured documents based on his unstructed templates. The problem is that the xreferences seem to be disappearing when we open in unstructured framemaker. Anybody have advice on how to retain cross references after structure is removed from a document? Ie from an element based xref -> paragraph based cross reference. Thanks.

[Russ Ward]

Strato,

I think you are out of luck, at least as far as how you are trying to do it. When you remove the structure tree, you are removing the metadata that defines the xrefs.

My best guess is that you'll need some sort of FDK client or a FrameScript. You'll need to generate the cross-reference markers in the appropriate locations and redirect the xrefs to them. I was thinking that maybe you could generate the cross-reference markers with your XSLT, but you'll still need some sort of manual or automated processing to convert the xrefs to be interally paragraph (marker)-based. I don't think there is any way to create a paragraph-based xref when importing XML. Maybe creating markers with the XSLT would get you halfway, but I still think something else would be required.

Russ