Cross Referencing Images

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riccardo
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Cross Referencing Images

Post by riccardo »

Sorry if this is really a newbie question, but I've just squandered hours, in the documentation, searching the forum, googling more generally, and messing around with the NWP ...

I want to place a number of pictures in a long document, and be able to reference them, as in 'see figure 14, "East End Of Grand Canyon"' where "East End Of Grand Canyon" is both the caption title of the picture and the reference ID of the photo for the purposes of using a cross reference. It does not appear that I can even cross reference a photo as it doesn't appear that I can bookmark a photo, bookmarks being the method, I gather, for creating cross reference targets. Am I missing something obvious?

This is trivially easy in OpenOffice. I gather one can do it in Mellel, which I also like, but it seems mind-bogglingly complex. And the documentation in both NWP and Mellel leaves something to be desired in terms of depth of explanation. The ability to do this is sort of alluded to, but never actually explained.

I'd just do the project in OpenOffice, but a) I generally prefer NWP and b) I'm working with a colleague who has an older Mac with NeoOffice and it runs like a slug on his computer, whereas NWP runs just fine.
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phspaelti
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Re: Cross Referencing Images

Post by phspaelti »

I don't have a lot of experience with this, but I had no problems trying to bookmark an image…
philip
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martin
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Re: Cross Referencing Images

Post by martin »

Yes, one can definitely bookmark images in NWP. However, I think there's a better way to approach this.

Let's work from this sample document I threw together:
list xref.png
list xref.png (28.07 KiB) Viewed 12681 times
As you might be able to see from the coloring, just after the inserted image, there is a list item whose text is "Figure 1".

Creating a List Style For Figures
Setting up a list style to do your figure numbering is a good idea and makes the rest of the process easier as well. Here's how:

1. Add a new List style (eg: the menu Format > Lists > New List Style.
2. Name the style Figures, or whatever else you please.
3. Checkmark the "continue throughout document" option, if it is not already turned on.
4. Choose the "Numbered" option from the "Kind" popup button.
5. Click the "Create" button to add the style.

There's one last part- configuring your list style so it shows the text "Figure" somewhere:

6. Place the caret/selection in a paragraph just following an image you want to caption.
7. Apply your list style to that paragraph.
8. Look to the Lists palette. You should see a text field labelled "Before text". Click in that field and type "Figure " (space included).
9. Press the Return key (or click back in the document body).

You should now see that the list item reads "Figure 1". Whenever you apply this list style in the future, the word "Figure" will appear automatically; you only have to configure the "before text" once.

One final tip about styles: you may find it best to create a "Figure Caption" paragraph style. This paragraph style could enforce not only the just created Figures list style, but also any other formatting you desire, eg: centering the caption.

Cross-Referencing Figures
From the screenshot, you might notice I use two cross-reference to achieve the exact quoting you described. But the good thing is that with the applied list style in place, you won't need to add any bookmarks manually. Once you've applied the list style and typed a caption, here's how to insert those cross-references.

1. Choose the menu Insert > Cross Reference.
2. From the "Insert Reference to" popup button, choose "List Item".
3. From the listing, select the desired figure caption paragraph.
4. From the "Display Text" popup button, choose "List Item Number".
5. Click the "Insert" button.

You should see the full "Figure #" cross-ref text inserted. If you also want to see the caption text, repeat those steps 1-5 again but this time set the display text to "Paragraph Text".

I hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any troubles or confusions.
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mrennie
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Re: Cross Referencing Images

Post by mrennie »

Hi Martin,

allow me to add one more suggestion.
martin wrote:One final tip about styles: you may find it best to create a "Figure Caption" paragraph style. This paragraph style could enforce not only the just created Figures list style, but also any other formatting you desire, eg: centering the caption.
I would also create a paragraph style specifically for the images (this only works if the pictures are placed in-line); that way, you can enable "keep with next" in the paragraph style to make sure that the image and its caption stay together.
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martin
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Re: Cross Referencing Images

Post by martin »

Thanks mrennie, that's a great suggestion. One could also configure this image paragraph style so that the "Figure Caption" style is the next style (eg: changed to automatically when one inserts a newline).
feat
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Re: Cross Referencing Images

Post by feat »

and how can we have a space instead of the tab that inserts between the number and the caption proper?
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mrennie
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Re: Cross Referencing Images

Post by mrennie »

There is currently no way to make Nisus Writer Pro do that. It has been requested many times, though, so who knows, perhaps it will be included in a future version.
riccardo
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Re: Cross Referencing Images

Post by riccardo »

Martin, thanks for the tips. Seems to work. I will have to experiment to get it to format the way I want, but at least the cross-referencing works. :)
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