FrameMaker problem with table numbering

[Eddie VanArsdall]

Thanks, Kathleen. I am quite the admirer of Shlomo's expertise. I will do
that.
 
Kind Regards,
Eddie

  _____  

From: kathleen.eamd at gmail.com [mailto:kathleen.eamd at gmail.com] On Behalf Of
Kathleen MacDowell
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 11:43 PM
To: Eddie VanArsdall
Cc: techwr-l at lists.techwr-l.com
Subject: Re: FrameMaker problem with table numbering


Eddie,
 
If Daniel's solution doesn't work, try contacting Shlomo Perets. His website
is at
 
http://www.microtype.com/
 
and he is a font of knowledge about FM.
 
Good luck,
 
Kathleen

 
On 2/1/07, Eddie VanArsdall <evanarsdall at comcast.net> wrote: 

Hi, all:

I have been using Frame for a few years and am currently updating Frame 7.2
templates (unstructured) for my client, as well as using those templates to 
create deliverables. I didn't create the original templates, but they're
pretty straightforward.

I'm running into a problem that I have never encountered, and I can't solve
it. The templates include various table formats, each of which has a 
built-in table title, numbered "Table X.X." When the tables were created,
each title was formatted with a TableTitle tag. The numbering definition for
the tag is T:Table <$chapnum>.<n+>, and no other tags use the T series 
label--only tables.

At one point while updating the templates, I noted that most of the tags in
the template have spaces in the name, so I changed the TableTitle tag name
to Table Title (from no space to space). After I changed the name, the table

numbering ceased to work. They apply the correct chapter number, but the
second number is always a one (1). So, if we're in Chapter 1, all tables are
1.1; in Chapter 2, they're all 2.1.

I have tried everything that I can think of: 
*       Reapplied the tag and updated the table definitions
*       Removed and restored the numbering in the tag definition
*       Restored the name to TableTitle
*       Went back to our older templates and re-imported the old table 
formats.

The numbering is still broken.

The only way I could get the numbering to work was to redefine the table
definitions from scratch. But there's still a twist. If I'm using a clean
new template with my newly built table definitions, the numbering works 
fine. But if I copy a table from a document based on the older template, the
numbering breaks. This is causing a major headache, because my team will
routinely want to copy old tables into newer documents. If we copy any 
text--even one word--from a table in a document that has been affected by
this problem, the numbering breaks.

I posted this on the Adobe forum and received a lot of great advice, but
none of the proposed solutions worked. Among the solutions I tried were 
searching and replacing "TableTitle" with "Table Title," and saving the file
as a MIF and then saving the MIF as an FM file. Since then, we're back to
using TableTitle with no space, but the numbering is still breaking unless 
we create brand new documents. And of course, we have a lot of old text that
we have to reuse.

I would appreciate advice. This problem is really affecting our workflow and
deadlines.

BTW, I'm new to posting here, so if there's a more specialized list that I 
should be posting this to, please let me know.

Best Regards,

Eddie

Edward VanArsdall
Information Design and Development
Technical Writing and Editing | Training | Instructional Design |
Informational Analysis 
Senior Member, Society for Technical Communication
evanarsdall at comcast.net
H: 703-486-2952
C: 703-201-6433

-- 
Kathleen MacDowell
www.writefortheuser.com