| Seems to me there's another note floating around here asking for this
capability, referred to as "synonyms". In fact, now that I think about
it, I started a note on it cuz I wanted to define symbols for oft-used
math formulas. I ran into another case today; I wanted to do something
like <DEFINE_SYMBOL>(uwidget\<mcs>(micro)widget), where uwidget is a
product code name that appears often in our specs and that will
eventually change.
I think the answer was "no can do".
Here's one for the wishlist, digressing just a bit. Because the micro
symbol is universal to the industry, how about a tag like <u> or <mu> to
replace <mcs>(micro)?
Along the same lines, how about a <TM> tag instead of
<special_char>(trademark)? Not only is DEC increasingly concerned about
properly identifying internal and external products, I bet the
issue is widespread in the industry. I know that our standards
do not encourage identifying competitor products (opt for generic names
like photocopy instead of Xerox(tm) ). But sometimes it just ain't
possible. Take a document that describes benchmarks for a particular
kind of product; the benchmarks may not be meaningful without
explicitly naming the competition.
I don't think that the DOCUMENT developers should be in the business of
monitoring standards and making it easy for everyone to adhere to every
standard, especially those that are only internal. But if we are aware
that customers face the same kinds of issues, I think that those
particular cases warrant investigation. Does this make sense to anyone
else?
Please don't lose sight that .0 raised one issue, and that this note
expanded on it raising another:
1. Tag synonym/redefinition capabilities using <define_symbol>.
2. Adding tags that are universal, such as <mu> and <tm>.
Rose
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| Thanks.
After thinking further about .0, one way to do it is by the use
of conditions: the global symbol def. file could parametrize the
symbol definition by testing predefined conditions (one for each
book element).
Each book element just have to set the appropriate condition before
referencing the symbol.
Just in case somebody is interested,
Marc.
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