Re: Re Counter refs; XyW Icon

[cld@xxxxxxxx (Carl Distefano)]

Reply to note from Patricia M Godfrey  Thu, 31
Oct 2002 10:40:18 -0500

> But note that there is a separate dedicated set of chapter
> number counters (C0--that's zero, not cap oh), which one
> references with REC.

I never did see the need for a dedicated REferenCe comand for
chapters. If you give each chapter counter a unique label, REF
works just as well. And, operationally, it doesn't matter if the
counter assigned to chapters is level 0, or level 14, or anything in
between. Unless I'm missing something, REC seems an unnecessary
complication.

> You can also reference pages (REP) in the same way.

Actually, with REP you can refer to a name embedded in either a
Counter or a LaBel. For example, you could have a numbered
paragraph:

". This is the start of a numbered paragraph about
dinosaurs."

And then a reference like:

"See the discussion of dinosaurs in paragraph , starting on
page ."

Or an unnumbered paragraph:

"This is the start of a unnumbered paragraph about
dinosaurs."

And a reference:

"See the discussion of dinosaurs starting on page ."

> What you can't do, alas, is refer to the TITLE of a
> chapter or numbered header.

Sure you can, with a little bit of doing. Just put the titles into
memory-resident ("ordinary" [A-Z|0-9] or "permanent" [100-999])
Save/Gets and InSert (IS or VA@ for ordinary S/Gs, VA@ for permanent
S/Gs; 77-char limit for VA@ but several S/Gs can be strung together
for longer titles) the appropriate S/G in text at the REFerence
point. You'd have to maintain a little XPL program that stuffed the
titles into the S/Gs. It might look something like this:

;*; CHAPTERS.PM
;*;
;*;
;*;
;*;
;*;
;*;
;*; End of program

In the text, the chapter headings would look like:


Chapter 




Chapter 




Chapter 




Chapter 




Chapter 




Chapter 



And references to chapters would look like:

"See Chapter , entitled `', starting at page
."

The only times you'd have to RUN CHAPTERS.PM would be at the
beginning of an editing session and whenever the program itself is
changed (i.e., an existing title is edited or a new title is added).
Not too onerous.

You could pull a Pinter and reverse the sequence of the chapters, or
mix them up any which way, and the references to chapter numbers and
titles should all still work.

Not bad for a dinosaur, eh?

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx
http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/