🚀 go-pugleaf

Gilda,

Here are some simple rules for creating book-to-book links in PDFs
from FM:

1. If you're creating the PDFs of the books as a single PDF, then you
must have the respective ".book" files open (no need for the .fm files
to be open), when creating the PDFs. Otherwise, the "external" links
will be made to the specific pdf equivalent of the ".fm" file, if the
".book" file is not open.

2. The links between the books on the same disk drive, will be as
relative links, which need to preserved if the files are moved.

3. If the goal is to have all of the book PDFs in one place for
distribution, then it's best to place all of the .book files in the
same folder to begin with. The .fm files can be in their own
respective project folders, but you have to keep the books together.

Caution: simply moving/copying (or doing a Save As from within FM) the
.book files to the common folder will not work, as they will be
missing the (relative) path to the actual .fm files. You'll need to
either recreate the book files (be careful with TOC, IX and other
generated files - you have to recreate, not add, these to book) in the
target folder or do some spelunking in a .mif version of the .book to
adjust the path on the "<FileName" entry of each book component. 
[This sounds like a job for Framescript... ;-) ]

4. If the names of the .book files are not the names that you want to
have on the final PDF files, then change the .book filenames to what
you want before creating the PDFs. When the .book files are open for
creating PDFs, FM will use the .book filename for the target in
cross-book links. Let FM always handle the naming, otherwise you run a
very good chance of breaking cross-book links.

5. If you are producing the PDFs as individual files of the component
.fm files in the book, then things are a bit trickier. You have to do
each component file, one at a time and have the target .book file open
when going down this route. It won't work as you expect when trying to
print using the "*" directive for the multiple files at once. IIRC,
there was a plug-in from Mekon quite a while ago that fixed this
situation for FM5 and 6. I don't know if it's needed now, as I tend to
avoid the SaveAs PDF route in the newer versions, so I haven't tested
this issue with FM8 or FM9.

I hope this helps clarify some things. And the grand master of all
things FM to PDF (Shlomo Perets) may be all over this if I've got
something wrong or have outdated advice. In that case, never mind...