Saving compound graphics in structured documents OR how to create a link in a graphic

Question

Hi all,
Frame 9 structured.
We need to make a graphic icon into a link.  In nonstructured documents (we have a different product that is not in structure), we just create a text frame on top of the graphic in the anchored frame, and add a hypertext marker to it.
But in the structured docs, when you do that, Frame generates a .cgm file since the graphic is compound.  Is there either:
1. Another way to make a graphic into a link
2. A way to persist the compound graphic into a file that does not get overwritten with a different name each time and that is also in a .png format.
We have tried tweaking the R/W rules to have Frame write out a PNG, and so far, this is not working.  Here's the code block we tried:
element "graphic" {
  is fm Graphic element;
  writer anchored frame  {
    export to file "$(docname).png" as "PNG";
I can see no verifiable effect from this.  Frame continues to generate a new .cgm file.  And even if it did generate a .png, I assume it would increment the number in the filename.  We have an images directory that contains all the images and we cannot support a bunch of loose images in the document directory, especially ones whose filename change all the time.
Anyone know if there are workarounds for this?  We are budgeted to move to Frame 11 in 2013, so if there's a fix in that version, it would expedite our migration. 
Thanks very much for any help,
Shelley Hoose
Rogue Wave Software

Answer 1

Shelley,
If there is more than one item in the anchored frame, I don't think there is any way to change the default behavior, that is, the generation of a CGM composite. Maybe you could through with an import/export API client, but that sounds like an extreme option.
I would suggest that this is not a bug, though. The possible layout variations in a document are endless and at some point FM just needs to make an assumption. So, I think this behavior is reasonable and not in need of a "fix." Maybe it would be nice if you could control the file format (which is always CGM), but otherwise it makes sense to me.
In short, if you must embed these hyperlink markers in the anchored frames, I think you'll need to do some programming to roundtrip XML. Even if you could get a PNG generated, you would lose the hyperlinks on the way back in. This begs the question... is it absolutely necessary to have these links? Is it because you need them in a PDF?
Russ