Thank you Fred -- I'm pretty sure the help pages and the user guide said the same thing, but I haven't been able to make heads or tails of them. Your explanation is much clearer.
Perhaps you should offer your services to the Adobe Company? ;) Deirdre On 2/20/08, Fred Ridder <docudoc at hotmail.com> wrote: > > Deirdre Reagan wrote: > > > Just to mix things up, the next question will appear in the form of a > statement. > > > > There is very little difference between cross-references and variables. > > > > Discuss. > > > Disagree almost completely. IMO, about the only thing they have in > common is that they are methods of inserting content into a > FrameMaker document by reference. > > Cross-references are used to retrieve some combination of attributes > (e.g. page location, paragraph autonumbering) and content of a > specific target paragraph. You can build cross-reference formats that > specify different attributes and include various bits of static text and > punctuation, and you can globally redefine these formats to repurpose > the same files for use in different deliverables (e.g. including the page > number in printed or PDF outputs but omitting it in HTML deliverable). > Cross-references always point to a specific paragraph, which makes > them less useful ifd you are using some of the same component files > in multiple books. > > User variables, on the other hand, retrieve a fixed text string of up > to 255 characters. Period. No page number. No autonumbering. No > ability to build different variations of the content. Just a text string. > Eminently useful for things like product names or model numbers, > and document titles and reference numbers. Variable definitions > are stored locally in each file, but are easily updated across a book > by importing them as format properties from one file (e.g., a template), > which works well when you are sharing some chapters among multiple > books. > > Cross-references are automatically refreshed every time you open > a file. This is overkill for relatively static content like document titles > and product names. > > Cross-references get turned into hyperlinks when you publish a > document to PDF (and usually to HTML, as well). To me, this is > worse than overkill if you use x-refs for book titles because I think > it's a major annoyance to have each and every instance of the > title be a live hyperlink that takes you to the title page of the book. > > ________________________________ > Helping your favorite cause is as easy as instant messaging. You IM, we > give. Learn more.