How Can I Avoid Losing Cross-References?

[SER617]

We have multiple .book files that contain multiple .fm files, many of which contain cross references. Is it possible to work with those files outside of their network location (i.e from a flash drive) without losing the cross references? My employees frequently take work home or work remotely; however, we do not have remote access to our network, so they either e-mail the necessary .fm files or save them to a flash drive to work from. But when they return to the office and "save as" those files, the cross references become unresolved. Is there a way to avoid this?

[Bob_Niland]

Cross-Reference Markers in Frame are generally pretty robust. As long as nothing damages the <MType 9>, <MText `xyzzy'> tags in the target and <XRefSrcText> and <XRefSrcFile `filepath'> at the reference, Frame will find and connect them. Typical FM edits don't delete such Markers, even if unreferenced.

I have also seen FM find Markers when deleted, but replaced by new markers with identical <MText>. The <Unique> tags change, but are apparently ignored.

Now, if you are on FM10 or earlier, Xref markers in tables can be destroyed by doing a table sort, but that's a low odds scenario.

Are these hand-crafted markers you are losing, or markers that FM auto-creates when you do an Xref by Paragraph?

My guess here is that something the remote writers are doing is changing the <XRefSrcFile `filepath'>. The way I avoid that is by building a clone of the client's filesystem on my home system.

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These tags are MIF. You might save some of the broken files as MIF and examine an unresolved <XRef tag in a <ParaLine

[SER617]

OK, thank you. We are using FM 10, and the x-refs are auto-created (i.e. we use the x-ref button, choose paragraph, then find the paragraph tag and accompanying heading to reference to). I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "changing the <XrefSrcFile 'filepath'>." They are taking single .fm files home with them, but not all of the files or the .book file, then saving over those .fm files when they return to the office. Would this change the filepath like you mentioned? I appreciate your help!

[Bob_Niland]

> They are taking single .fm files home with them ...

How are they "taking" them?

Safe way:

• Save and close all files on the office system.
• Use file browser or command line to copy the files of interest to the transport medium.
• Open the files at home, edit. Do not attempt to fix any broken Xrefs.
• Save in place at home (not to transport medium)
• Copy to transport medium.

This preserves the original filepath references, which should survive the trip even though unresolved at home.

Fail ways:

• Save to transport medium at office, and.or
• Save to transport medium at home.

Doing this re-writes the Xref filepaths relative to the current directory hierarchy. Unless you mimic the office tree at home, doing either of the above will make some or all Xrefs unresolved.

When you save an FM document to a new filepath, it revises the <XrefSrcFile 'filepath'> data structures to point to the new locations of Xrefs (and other imported content) relative to the new location. If you don't want this to happen (sometimes you do, sometimes you don't), then copy or move the closed document.