Creating autonumber (CS3)

Question

Hello!
I have had this question for ages and I have not managed to find a solution for it in InDesign. I assume, it is my ignorance.
I need to create catalogues of items. Items are grouped. For each item should run overall ID (over the whole document) and group ID (inside the given sub-document). This should run through the whole indb document (each group is a separate indd file).
So far I have renumbered it manually, but it means a lot of work in case of changes and also large possibility for human error.
Can anyone guide me - how can I create such elements?
I also looked through the scripting introduction document and found no direct solutions from there either.
Thus - I need to create:
Group 1 (document 1)
1     1     Item
2     2     Item
n     n     Item
Group 2 (document 2)
n+1     1     Item
n+2     2     Item
n+m     m     Item
Group x (document x)
n+m+..+1     1     Item
n+m+..+2     2     Item
n+m+o         o     Item
Thanks a lot!
Antti

Answer 1

234542f344d654165e wrote:
Hi!
That's what I thought..
NR-1 changes its number, if it moves in the list of items. It is important, that I can point to that specific item by [2011-XX-1]. It is not important, if it has another number in another year.
Basically - I give out each year 1 or more catalogues on various subjects. ID is for identifying an item within that year (edition). It is no problem, if in edition 2003 it was 103 and in 2011 it is 165.
As those catalogues are big work for one person to compile and structurize, they need a lot of rework, before they are finished. At the same time, it is not good to leave them un-numbered until the print as then it is very hard to read the manuscript.
So I need to change the items, but keep the numbers. And I do need to splid the idenfiers - sometimes there maybe from a-h parallel items with the same number.
The more I try to find a solution the more I see, there is none.. Wisdoming process has not changed
As Peter S. implied, changing a catalog item's number from one edition to another can be confusing for users who know the items by their numbers, and who receive new editions periodically. If this is your preferred method, so be it.
As I noted earlier, a spreadsheet or database approach is probably applicable to a lesser or greater degree, at least in cases where the items and their identifiers are constant.
I searched Google for "control break programming" without quotes; the term "control break" describes what is sometimes also known as a "cascading sort," or a "hierarchical sort." If you are familiar with some of the US-based TV police-forensic programs that feature techs filtering inconceivably-huge amounts of data to instantly identify suspects who fit a complex series of properties -  for example, three-fingered left-handed redheads violent robbers who've been paroled or released from prisons in states that don't apply salt compounds to their roads in snow season, and who were truants in middle school - you get the idea. All the fictional available databases are sorted to filter out those who fit all the categories. A full report of this kind of search is grouped by more-general properties, say non-road-salting states, then by more-and-more-specific properties within more-general properties. In reports, each property-group change is considered a control break - the controlling property group is exhausted, and another takes over. There's an example on page 19 of this document that turned up in my Google search: http://www.cerritos.edu/dmellas/cis103/chap07-mod.pdf The discussion of control-break programming in balance of the document may be more information than you need.
It's still not clear to me how you assign your identifiers, the ones you want to keep constant through one edition only; if they're autonumbers, they will change when rearranged. You may be OK with usi the numbers automatically the first time you collect the content, but to keep them constant, you'll need to use Type > Bullets & Numbering > Convert  Numbers to Text on selected autonumbered content.
HTH
Regards,
Peter
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices