Hidden bookmark?

[brsnyder]

I see in the macro reference manual that you can create a hidden bookmark, but I can't figure out what it is, and I don't see any reference to hidden bookmarks in the user manual.

I guess I also don't understand what the difference would be between a visible and hidden bookmark. It says if they're hidden they're not shown to the user. But no bookmarks are shown to the user, are they? Unless you mean in the bookmark pane. Is that what it means?

Once I find out what a hidden bookmark is, I might want one. Is there any way to create one in the UI, or do you have to use a macro?

The macro reference also says that the name property of auto-named bookmarks are never shown to the user, but I see lot of "XYZ (auto-named)" entries in the bookmark navigator. So I don''t understand that either. Can someone clarify?

Thanks -- Barbara

[phspaelti]

Hidden bookmarks are indeed hidden in the bookmark pane, and so they won't be of direct use to the user. The purpose of these things is do things like create cross-references, where you want the information to be linked, but you don't want the user to see a bunch of incomprehensible bookmarks clogging their bookmark menu.

[brsnyder]

Thanks, that answers some of my questions, but a couple remain.

-- Is it a typo/outdated info that auto-named bookmarks should be invisible?

-- Is there any way to create a hidden bookmark in the UI?

Thanks -- Barbara

[phspaelti]

Is it a typo/outdated info that auto-named bookmarks should be invisible?

Where does it say this? What it does say, is that the name of auto-named bookmarks is not displayed to the user. (Instead it uses the displayName.)

Is there any way to create a hidden bookmark in the UI?

What would be the point be of such a hidden bookmark?
But here's a two line macro that will create such a bookmark "in the UI" applied to the current selection:

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$sel = TextSelection.active
Bookmark.newAutonamedAddedToTextSelection @True, $sel

The result will be unimpressive; an invisible, inaccessible bookmark.
If you want to see that the bookmark is truly there, you can use code like this:

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$doc = Document.active
prompt $doc.allBookmarks

Assuming the hidden bookmark is the only bookmark in your document you will see something like this:

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(Bookmark<_Ref32bf1e67> hidden "some_text (autonamed)")

The "_Ref32bf1e67" is the name which is "never" displayed to the user, and the "some_text (autonamed)" is the displayName.

[brsnyder]

Where does it say this? What it does say, is that the name of auto-named bookmarks is not displayed to the user. (Instead it uses the displayName.)

My mistake. I misread this text: "Adds a new automatically-named bookmark to the text specified by the given TextSelection object. If isHidden is @true, then this bookmark is not shown to the user."

What would be the point be of such a hidden bookmark?

When I asked "Is there any way to create a hidden bookmark in the UI?" what I meant was "Is there a way to create a hidden bookmark using menu commands in the UI? Or do I have to use a macro to do create a hidden bookmark?"

I can definitely see the point of hidden bookmarks. It's like <anchor> in HTML. I will likely be using lots of xrefs to various text that I don't want to show up in the bookmark navigator. In fact, coming from FrameMaker, this whole concept took me a few moments to wrap my head around. It would be great if "Hidden" was a checkbox option in the create bookmark dialog.

Thanks for your time -- Barbara