skip letter 'I' in numbering

[Vicki38950098ejye]

Hi,

Task is to skip the letter 'I' in Appendix numbering (structured FM).

Chat GBT tells me:

FM will always include 'I' unless you break out of the automated sequence by:

-Manually typing letters
-Using a custom counter and string mapping

-Or scripting a solution

Don't want to do it manually, and was wondering what is a good solution for this?

I am new, so any helpful information about document numbering would be helpful.
ChatGBT <again> tells me that  FM uses an automated sequence for appendix numbering, and that automated sequence is:  <A+> building block is based on the ASCII values of uppercase letters, starting at A (ASCII 65) and incrementing by 1 for each new instance.

How can you 'see' this in FM?  I get the panel at Format >Numbering that gives you an interface to set the numbers.

Thank you,
Vicki

[Winfried Reng]

Hi Vicki,

I do not know your structured application which can do all sorts of things via the EDD.

What I can tell:

Yes, FrameMaker uses <A+> in paragraph numbering ( test this in a (non-structured?) file: open the Paragraph Designer and go to the Numbering tab; activate Numbering and enter <A+> in the Format text box), and for each paragraph of this paragraph format the numbering counts up (ABCD, etc.).

FM will not skip I (I guess you mean the upper case i, don't you?). You cannot enter your own set of numbering characters.

A (manual) solution would be to insert an otherwise empty paragraph format (e.g. body) with <I> as numbering. Apply white color, 2 pt to this empty paragraph with the I numbering. Then it would be almost invisible.

The following paragraph with your numbering would continue with J.

Of course you can write an ExtendScript script to automate this.

Best regards, Winfried

[frameexpert]

If your FrameMaker document is part of a book, always set the numbering at the book level. Select the component in the book, right-click on it, and choose Numbering. You can either choose a value, or you can Continue Numbering from Previous Chapter in Book.

For your situation, you can select the component that would normally number as "I" and use the Numbering dialog box to change it to something else. If you need help with this, contact me offlist and we can do a quick meeting. rick at frameexpert dot com

[Bob_Niland]

It's likely of no use to you at all, esp. in Structured, but FM does ‘know’ how to implement arbitrary numbering, because it's supported in
Format🞃Document>Numbering…/Footnote Numbering\
[Custom]
Pattern: ABCDEFGHJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

These can then be cross-referenced by $paranum or $paranumonly. But it's all a bit of a hack, usually requiring book meta-content not published, and resulting in hypertext that goes nowhere.

It can be handy for fixed-range numbering using arbitrary Unicode character sequences, such as:
❶❷❸❹❺❻❼❽❾❿⓫⓬⓭⓮⓯⓰⓱⓲⓳⓴
Fixed? Yeah, the rollover after ⓴ here would be to ❶❶, and not to ❷❶. There's no way to get it to usefully pick up the ⓿ either.

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

Gosh, I can think of so many reasons for avoiding this, including accuracy of referencing.

What's the reason for creating your own custom alphabet that's missing characters?

Can you instead display numbers or use a serif font to avoid confusion?