Cross References

[Pauls]

Thanks @MikeTO logging those now - I dont think the anchor panel has a context menu also if there is only one action I would expect it to be a double click.

[walt.farrell]

On 7/4/2023 at 4:52 AM, Petar Petrenko said:

Now, when we have cross references, can we expect page numbers in TOC to be automatically cross referenced when Publisher creates TOC styles (something like MS Word) so we have auto page renumbering in TOC when text is changed?

Sorry, but I don't understand what you're asking for there. TOC page references change today, when you update the TOC.

[walt.farrell]

To help anyone else who may be trying Cross References in Publisher 2.2 on iPad: The field values (<PageNumber>, etc.) for the Text field in the Edit Cross-Reference dialog are handled differently. They are not accessed via a pulldown in the Text field. Instead, they are accessed via the software keyboard. With the cursor in the Text field, you'll see this at the bottom of the screen:  

Tap that highlighted icon, and you'll get this: 

 

[Petar Petrenko]

35 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Sorry, but I don't understand what you're asking for there. TOC page references change today, when you update the TOC.

Sometimes, updating TOCs is nightmare, expecially when you do some manual adjustments. In MS Word, when you create TOC and then you need to add/remove some text, some of the subheads included in TOC change their previous locations, bot the TOC page numbers are automatically adjusted without updating it. No additional manual fixing.

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Sometimes, updating TOCs is nightmare, expecially when you do some manual adjustments

Thanks. All adjustments in TOCs should be done by adjusting the automatically-created TOC Text Styles. Any other approach will lead to a lot of extra work.

Edit:  But I can see there might be possibilities of manually creating a TOC, and using cross-references to help populate it.

[Petar Petrenko]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

All adjustments in TOCs should be done by adjusting the automatically-created TOC Text Styles.

It can't be done automatically in all situations. Lets say, sometimes two line must be joined into one, the author is listed bellow the title instead above...

[BR22]

On 7/4/2023 at 7:54 PM, MikeTO said:

Hi, thanks for all the improvements to cross references.

1. Missing index names: Thanks for the index mark feature, much appreciated! I can't get it to work though. With my book document, about 75% of the index marks lack a name, there's just a page number shown. I thought it might be the complexity of that document so I created this simple test file with index marks for each of the words shown on the left and all of them are missing a name in the xref dialog. Adding the xref works fine and the name shows up in the panel, it's just that you can't see all the names in the dialog. Once it's working I'll re-cross reference my book with index marks to give it a workout.

xref index.afpub

2. Can't filter: In the 2.1 beta, anchors could be filtered by name but in the 2.1 beta anchors and index marks cannot be filtered by name. The instructions Ash provided imply that you can filter for any of them. Now I was stupid and suggested that Filter Text and Style be disabled for Anchor so this is probably my fault, I should have suggested only disabling Filter Style which applies just to paragraphs, not Filter Text which is really useful for hundreds of Anchors and now Index Marks.

3. No default: In the 2.1 beta which lacked presets, it defaulted to page number, the most common option, which was nice. I was stumped at first using the 2.2 beta wondering how to get the OK button to be enabled so I could click on it. I ignored the presets section because I didn't want to do anything complicated. Perhaps it would be better to default the Text field to pagenumber rather than leaving it blank?

4. Index marks vs. mark: In the Link To list there is Anchor, Paragraph, and Index Marks with an "s". It should be singular to match the others.

5. Panel columns: Thanks for adding the xref source page number column!! It might be nice if the column defaulted wide enough to hold 3-digit page numbers which would work for most books. A lot of my page numbers showed an ellipsis until I scaled it wider.

6. Panel list context menu: There is no context menu when you right click a xref. If you right click an anchor or index mark in those panels you get choices like Edit but the only way to edit a xref is with double click. 

7. Preflight: Thanks for adding xrefs to Preflight!! It might be nice if there was a Fix All button but it's still good. I'll just assign a keyboard shortcut to Update All Cross References.

And thanks for all the other improvements like the Delete button. I haven't tried Presets yet but will play with it soon.

Cheers

To add to this, in the "Insert Cross-Reference" panel there is no option to add the Index Mark name in the Text box dropdown list. I have been using Paragraph Body for now, but there is some strangness there when the index mark contains a non-standard character. For example, I have an index mark set on "Ashērāh (GROVE)" where Ashērāh is actually in Garamond All Caps, but the reference renders it just like this forum editor with only the first letter capitalized.

Edited July 10, 2023 by BR22
Added capitalization issue for special characters.

[MikeTO]

29 minutes ago, BR22 said:

To add to this, in the "Insert Cross-Reference" panel there is no option to add the Index Mark name in the Text box dropdown list.

You don't need to enter an index mark name to add a cross reference to an index mark, just click on the mark's name in the list. Some of the names are blank (#1 in my list) and you can't filter the list of index marks (#2 in my feedback), but you can insert cross references to index marks. I think we need to wait for the next update though.

[BR22]

27 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

You don't need to enter an index mark name to add a cross reference to an index mark, just click on the mark's name in the list. Some of the names are blank (#1 in my list) and you can't filter the list of index marks (#2 in my feedback), but you can insert cross references to index marks. I think we need to wait for the next update though.

Clicking on the Index Mark in the list doesn't work for me. I'm on Windows.

[MikeTO]

22 minutes ago, BR22 said:

Clicking on the Index Mark in the list doesn't work for me. I'm on Windows.

Do you have PageNumber in the Text field? The dialog doesn't have any default value for what should be inserted so you have to choose a Preset or create a new one. There isn't a preset for page number alone so I created the one shown in this screenshot. But you need that PageNumber control thing in the Text field or the OK button won't be enabled. If you are doing this then it must be a Windows-specific issue.

[BR22]

1 hour ago, MikeTO said:

Do you have PageNumber in the Text field? The dialog doesn't have any default value for what should be inserted so you have to choose a Preset or create a new one. There isn't a preset for page number alone so I created the one shown in this screenshot. But you need that PageNumber control thing in the Text field or the OK button won't be enabled. If you are doing this then it must be a Windows-specific issue.

I can make presets that include all the available fields in the dropdown, they just can't have the index mark name in the cross-reference text as that is missing. I thought that perhaps you meant that clicking on the index mark in the list was giving you a default where the name appeared, but yes, there is no default.

[Pauls]

Anchor name will supply the name of the index mark too

[Hangman]

When opening a pdf file and creating a new Cross Reference style (because the document has no built in styles) using Style override in the Edit Cross-Reference modal window, regardless of the font size chosen for the new style, when the style is applied to the Cross Reference text it appears as 50 pt text even though when selected it is shown in the Character panel and Toolbar as the size created in the style, e.g., 10 pt.

This only appears to happen when working with pdf files, all works correctly with elements created directly within Publisher...

I'd be grateful to see if anyone else can replicate this on either Mac, Windows or iPad.

[Hangman]

When scrolling through a long list of pages in the Edit Cross-Reference window, with the window's default settings, page numbers are temporarily hidden by the scrollbar background. This means, to be able to see the page numbers when scrolling you have to first extend the width of the Page column, however it isn't sticky, i.e., you have to repeat the exercise everytime the dialog window is opened...

The Page Number positioning on Mac appears differently to Windows, i.e., when the Page column is expanded the Page Numbers are Ranged Right but centered in the column (which looks a little odd), on Windows the numbers are Ranged Right but ranged Left in the column, appearing directly beneath the 'P' of the Page heading...

 

Three requests for this dialog window...

1. As @Intuos5 mentions above, the ability to edit styles directly from this window would make things so much easier and far more flexible.
    
2. The option to swap the Paragraph Text and Page Number columns by dragging so the Page column can appear to the left of the Paragraph Text column.
    
3. The option to make the sort order sticky, I find it much easier to sort by page number, especially for lengthy documents but every time the window is opened it reverts back to being sorted by Paragraph Text. It would be great if the sort order chosen was remembered so it stays that way every time the window is opened rather than having to select the sort order again every single time.

 

[jmliss]

I appreciate the response to my question about cross referencing to an image by "adding a title" so to speak to an image or figure 

After toiling to figure out how to use the cross reference feature (need better manual entry/help page or a video), this is still not meeting my needs. I want to be able to put a title below an image with an automatic numbered list. I can do an automatic numbered list, with a custom text and cross reference it. But I cannot position the text under the image which is in a picture frame. The picture frame is placed over a large text Frame that covers the entire page via the master. So I put the picture frame in another group and added a text frame in that group that seemed to work, however, the list started to renumber even when I clicked manual renumber only. 

It shouldn't be this hard to be able to add a title to a frame, be it a image or table, such that the title moves with the image or table frame and that it automatically gets numbered so that cross referencing works across pages, and even documents.

I have an 800+ page document that is across two publisher files and is part of a book. I want these features to work across all files within the book.

 

 

[Petar Petrenko]

10 minutes ago, jmliss said:

But I cannot position the text under the image which is in a picture frame. The picture frame is placed over a large text Frame that covers the entire page via the master.

I don't know if I understood you well, but cross references purpose is to link objects on different pages and help locating each other, not to move any text up or down, left or right. You have to do it manually.

[walt.farrell]

14 minutes ago, jmliss said:

So I put the picture frame in another group and added a text frame in that group that seemed to work, however, the list started to renumber even when I clicked manual renumber only. 

Here's a sample from me to show that it can work:

cross-reference-test1.afpub

In the Bullets and Numbering settings, make sure that you have Manual selected for renumbering, and that you provide a Name, and check the Global option.

[Pauls]

@HangmanI've recreated that font size issue from PDF and will log it

[Hangman]

Hi @Pauls,

Thanks for confirming and logging...

[jmliss]

22 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Here's a sample from me to show that it can work:

cross-reference-test1.afpub

In the Bullets and Numbering settings, make sure that you have Manual selected for renumbering, and that you provide a Name, and check the Global option.

Walt,

You the man ! - you saved me again - thank you so much. I tried the example and it seems to be exactly what I need. Thank you so so much. And yes, I see the top group can be moved around as well. For my own learning, I duplicated the group and moved the duplicate and verified the list numbers updated.  Of course I wish the software made it a bit easier to add "automatic labels" to frames, but this is definitely a very good solution in support of that need.

I think checking the global box was what I was missing.

 

Thanks !

Jonathan

[Hangman]

Selecting No Preset in the Cross-Reference panel doesn't remove the currently selected preset, my assumption is it should as otherwise there seems little point in having a 'No Preset' option...

[Adriandw]

Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

When I insert a cross reference (see page 53 for example) that action creates an anchor.

In the document I'm working on, there are multiple references to the Glossary, so multiple anchors are created (see image).

That's fine, but each anchor shows up an an entry in the Table of Contents.

I can suppress that by deselecting "Export as PDF Bookmark"

So far so good - I don't get duplicate entries in the ToC.

But then the cross references in the exported PDF are no longer hyperlinked to the page in question.

That's a big drawback.

So my bypass is to leave "Export as PDF Bookmark" selected and then use a PDF editor to delete each duplicate bookmark by hand.

But it's annoying to have to do that each time I update the working draft.

Have I missed some setting? Or is this a bug/restriction in an otherwise excellent new feature?

[Pauls]

what settings are you using to create the cross references ?

 

[AllanP]

Liking the way this cross reference feature is shaping up .

Is it possible to insert multiple cross references?

The scenario I'm thinking of is : publication has a number of images across its pages; I want to create a list of the images and the pages on which they appear on a separate page at the end of the publication. Each image has a text frame with its caption in it, and that caption has a specific text style, e.g. "picture-caption".

I can see that I can create a text frame on that end page and then use the Insert cross reference option to add a cross reference to that frame using the features link to a paragraph filtered by style (so I can get just the "picture-caption" paragraphs selected, and I can set up the presets/text that I want to appear and insert a selected cross reference.

BUT it would be good, having got this filtered list of cross references, if they could all be inserted at once, rather than one at a time...

Or is there another way of doing this?

[Adriandw]

@Pauls I'm creating the cross-references using a right click  then "Insert Cross-Reference" then searching for the intended target - with Generate Hyperlinks checked