How do you create figure references to captions?

[tomjohnson1492]

How do you create figure references to captions in Flare? In Word, this technology is available. But I have no idea how to do it in Flare. I'm assuming it can't be done, right?

[KevinDAmery]

Does a cross reference not do what you need?

[tomjohnson1492]

I don't think so. Cross references point to page numbers. Figure references point to figure captions. One page may have several figure captions.

In Word, I insert figure references by going to Insert > Reference > Cross Reference, and then I choose Figure in the Reference Type drop down.

In Flare, if I insert a cross reference to something, it must be a topic, not an image/figure.

[KevinDAmery]

Pretty sure you can point to a bookmark or heading, and tell it to show the text from the target (although I could be wrong--I don't use X-refs because they don't account for variables at the moment).

[tomjohnson1492]

Yes, you can do cross references to bookmarks and headings, but figure references are different. Usually figures are labeled in sequential order such as Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, etc. If you use Flare's cross reference feature for figure captions, you have to specify the bookmark name. So in my topic, I'd have to insert a bookmark in a figure and call it Figure 1.

HOWEVER, suppose you apply a conditional build and don't print out the image with the Figure 2 bookmark. Then your output will skip from Figure 1 to Figure 3. There's no autonumbering functionality built into figure captions.

Additionally, I may want to change the style of the cross references with figure captions. With traditional cross refs, I want to include a page number. With figure captions, I don't. So to really use figure captions, you'd need to create another class of the xref style or something. I'm not sure if that's easily doable, because I insert cross refs by going to Insert > Cross Reference, not by selecting a style from the style pane.

[KevinDAmery]

You can apply a xref class when you edit the xref - select the class you want from the list in "Cross-Reference Properties." You can also modify the xref style or create new ones there if you need to.

As for the content, you can use or define a cross ref that uses the paranum variable--that will populate the cross reference with the block's autonumber property. This gets you around having to specify the figure number with the bookmark--instead, you just place a bookmark, then tell Flare to base the content of it on whatever the autonumber is for that block. You can also add text if you want (for example, "see Figure {paranum} on page {page}" or whatever meets your needs).

[tomjohnson1492]

Thanks for your reply, Kevin. However, I'm having trouble implementing the method you described. Here's what I'm doing:

1. In the Style editor, I added a "figurereference" class to the xref style, and then gave it the format See Figure {paranum}.
2. I added a bookmark to an image and named the bookmark "test."
3. I inserted a cross reference to the bookmark, and selected the figurereference class for the cross reference.
4. I generated the output to Word, but instead of the figure reference, it said UNRESOLVED CROSS REFERENCE.

Am I missing a step?

[KevinDAmery]

Does the paragraph with the bookmark have autonumbering applied to it. AFAIK, the paranum variable picks up on autonumbering, so if there is no autonumbering present it wouldn't have anything to reference to.

[tomjohnson1492]

You're right. I missed that step. I was a little unfamiliar with the auto-numbering property. This topic helped clarify that more: "Creating Auto-Number Formats for Styles."

It did work when I added an auto-numbering property to my image style. Thanks,

Tom

[KevinDAmery]

Great - glad it worked out.

[JasonK]

Is there a way to import MS Word Figure References into the Flare xref model? If not, can you suggest a method on best method to manual convert after importing?

[tomjohnson1492]

Do figure references work in print targets? I see the message "Format auto number commands cannot be convereted to Word output" when I build my Word target.