Referencing topics in another PDF project

[Carsten Pedersen]

I have been asked to solve a specific issue that our sales force often encounter.

What they want is to include a list of page/topic references in one PDF output, to another PDF output.
Or in other words, they want a list in one PDF manual to include references in another PDF manual.
E.g. "See Topic X, on page 91 in Manual B"

I know that I can make a PDF manual (lets call it Manual A) with a list including "See Topic X, on page 91".
But how do I build another manual (lets call it Manual B) which includes this list of reference in Manual A ?

The problem is of cause when I build Manual A the page numbers will change based on changed contents,
and in this case Manual B should also be aware of this and refer to the correct page.

Ideas:

Can I generate the list while building Manual A (without including it in Manual A), and then somehow take,
copy or reference the list and include it when building Manual B ?
Can I use a script to generate the list and save it while building Manual A, and then use it in Manual B.

Any suggestions?

-cpede

[devjoe]

Flare only evaluates page references like this for the manual it is building, so in general this is not going to work. Some ideas:

• Fake it all with variables. After you build the manuals once, update the variables to the right page numbers and then build it again. Fiddly, especially if you have a lot of these, but it will work if you can put in this amount of effort.
• Build one document with both manuals in it, resetting the page numbers before the second manual. After the build, use a PDF editor to extract one manual from the other. You probably can't get a proper TOC or index with this, though, but you might be able to do so if you also have separate builds of each document and you PDF-edit the pages of both manuals into the shells from the individual builds (hoping the broken links in the separate builds do not mess up the pagination).