Updating crossreference formats in book does not change appearance

[K.Daube]

Dear all,

For my compendium book (17 chapters, about 500 pages) I decided to change the format of cross reference from

<1-highlight><$paratext></> on page\ <$chapnum>\+<$pagenum>

to

<hypertext><1-highlight><$paratext></> on page\ <$chapnum>\+<$pagenum>

 So that the appearnce changes from this   to this 

• I changed the format in the first file of the book and imported the Xref formats to all other files in the book
• All files in the book are open.
• I updated the book multiple times, but the appearance does not change.
• When workin on a chapter new cross references appear of course in the new format - but I need to change others manually: Double click; Replace.

I'm not certain whether this is standard behaviour or a new fault in FM-15.0.5.838

[frameexpert · Accepted solution]

I am not sure about using multiple character format building blocks in a cross-reference format. It SHOULD work but the best approach might be to make a single character format with the combined properties that you want.

[Bob_Niland]

In addition to the question of whether Character Formats can be stacked in Xref expressions (something I've never tried), it would also be necessary to ensure, in all book component files, that each Character Format is carefully set to As-Is for every attribute except those it was created for. This remark is for the casual readership, as I'm sure Klaus knows this.

[K.Daube]

Yes, Rick, the effect must come from the 'unstackable' character formats - which I know about but thought it worked in x-refs: For a newly inserted x-ref it worked, but the update process did not work with these kind of x-ref formats.

Since the catalogues are a genuine FM mechanism, it was a quarter of an hour to fix all x-ref formats from

<hypertext><highlight-1>…

to

<x-ref>…

With the character format x-ref comprising colour and italic - Yes Bob, the trick with first placing the cursor into the side area outside of any text frame and then defining the character format is close to my heart.