mc-auto-number

[MC Hammer]

Hello everyone,
I came across some posts mentioning mc-auto-number (Under Unclassified in the stylesheet) and I do not really understand what I can set with this property apart from the "obvious" automatic numbering for pages, sections, chapters, etc. It looks like I can specify images or styles in mc-auto-number ...
Thanks in advance for any input!

[LTinker68]

What you might want to do instead is to go to a tag and expand the AutoNumber group for that tag. That displays the "pieces" that make up the mc-auto-number attribute. I use auto-numbering not just for number of headings (1.0, 1.1, 1.1.5, etc.), but also for sequential figure and table numbering (Figure 1, Table 34, etc.), but also for notes, tips, and other blocks of text that are preceded by the same text every time. For instance, in one project I have three auto-numbered paragraph classes that have text hanging to the left of the main paragraph text, and the hanging text may say "Get Command: " or "Set Command: " or "Read Command: ". So instead of typing that text every time, I just select the appropriate paragraph class. Another benefit of doing that is that the hanging text can be styled differently from the main text. So the auto-number-class field of those custom paragraphs call to a custom span tag that sets the text to be bold and italic.

You can get pretty creative with the auto-number feature in Flare. It doesn't have to just be numbers.

[MC Hammer]

Very creative indeed
Just a couple of questions more as I have just started investigating this.
1/If I want some text (e.g. Related Topics) and an image to be repeated for each of these note paragraphs, I presume I need to use 2 different auto-number-classes that I link to two different span classes (one for the text and one for the image). How would I do this?
2/I would be tempted to use a div instead of a paragraph for the normal text. Is this a good idea or...

Thanks again for your useful comments.

[LTinker68]

1/If I want some text (e.g. Related Topics) and an image to be repeated for each of these note paragraphs, I presume I need to use 2 different auto-number-classes that I link to two different span classes (one for the text and one for the image). How would I do this?

I'd use a DIV with the auto-numbering then, although you could possibly still achieve the same effect with a paragraph, but I'd probably go with the div. Set the image as a background image for the div and set it to not repeat. You'd have to play with the positioning some more to make sure the spanned text doesn't overlap the image.

2/I would be tempted to use a div instead of a paragraph for the normal text. Is this a good idea or...

The only drawback to DIVs is that Word doesn't recognize them so you can't output it to Word. If you're doing an online output and/or PDF output then it should work.

[MC Hammer]

Hi Lisa
Thanks for your input. I have managed to make several design for my special paragraphs, with some text and an image, using your suggestions. I have used DIVs as I only output HTML Help.
Thanks again!