By the way ... just to "plug" <grin> the BookVars plugin further ...
For a simple example (this is a complete file), here is the content of the text file first generated automatically by BookVars (and edited from then on by me): [General] AltBookVarsFile= DelVarCode= RenVarChar= LogFile=GSM Mobile Device Management-BookVars-log.txt LogType=1 ; WARNING: Changing EditorType may corrupt high-ascii characters! EditorType=0 [Groups] Count=1 1=RevGroup [RevGroup] ; User Variables Revision Date=2007-08-14 Revision Number=1.1 Document Name=GSM Mobile Device Management System Specification Company Name=Aeris Communications, Inc. As you can see above, I can then use the User Variables in *all* the documents inside the book - *just* like the scenario you asked about, Deirdre! :) The BookVars plugin allows me to read the user variable group into each and every document/file in the book. A more complex example (with many lines left out here to simplify this e-mail). In this example, I use two separate groups of User Variables (called RevGroup and UserGroup) and can choose to *separately* read each group into the documents/files in the book. The first version of this text file was automatically generated from BookVars, and all subsequent edits have been by me (using the built-in text editor in the plugin). This is a "work in progress" ... hence the [very] unusual Revision Date and [far less] unusual Revision Number! :) Our internal review drafts get the "a", "b", etc., after the version number, till the document is released formally. In this example, it would become 2.2 for the next customer release - I just edit this file, re-run the plugin and re-read the variables and voila! ... all references to the version number and date are updated cleanly and correctly! By the way, the use of the User Variables shown in "UserGroup" (boy, was that a mouthful!) is to make sure that I *always* get the correct numerical value in all locations in the documents/files in the book - this is an API spec, and it would be *very* bad for the code samples in the API doc to have the wrong value for that variable. [General] AltBookVarsFile= DelVarCode= RenVarChar= LogFile=Aeris System Interface-BookVars-log.txt LogType=1 ; WARNING: Changing EditorType may corrupt high-ascii characters! EditorType=0 [Groups] Count=2 1=RevGroup 2=UserGroup [RevGroup] ; User Variables Revision Date=2007-99-99 Revision Number=2.1a Document Name=Aeris System Interface Technical Description Company Name=Aeris Communications, Inc. [UserGroup] ; User Variables PASSWORD=200 PASSWORD_ACK=201 PASSWORD_REJECT=202 ... ... <*Lots* of lines deleted here for brevity> ... SMSRES_ORIG_ANSI_ACK=421 SMSRES_ORIG_GSM=422 SMSRES_ORIG_GSM_ACK=423 Z > -----Original Message----- > From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of > Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain at aeris.net) > Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 1:42 PM > To: Art Campbell; Deirdre Reagan > Cc: Fred Ridder; Frame Users > Subject: RE: cross reference vs variables > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Art Campbell [mailto:art.campbell at gmail.com] > > > > If it is, then you should be able to import them into all the other > > files so that all component files in the book have the same consistent > > set of variables. And then you could do a series of > > search-and-replaces to replace the cross-refs with variables. > > And, yes, this is *exactly* where using BookVars from Leximation makes > so much sense to me - "book level" variables! :)