🚀 go-pugleaf

FrameMaker indeed stores the cross-reference source file for external cross-references. (In FrameScript, you can query the XRefFile property.) So if you have two cross-references that point to different files, but to the same attribute value, FrameMaker doesn't have any problem resolving the cross-references correctly. I don't know how this would work in the XML world, but if the book gets saved to a single XML file, the duplicate values may cause problems.

One solution is to use FrameScript (or the FDK) to generate unique IDs for all UniqueID attributes in the book ahead of time. You can have a master "IDs.xml" file stored in the same folder as the script, so that the IDs are always unique, even across books. Whenever the script generates a new unique ID, it would check the master "IDs.xml" file to make sure it is unique. The new IDs are added to the "IDs.xml" file as they are generated so they are never reused.

Rick Quatro
rick at frameexpert dot com