Thanks David,

I have had a look at that, but I don't think it fit our needs for two reasons:

a) need initial caps on the fig or table itself, but lower case in the body copy as shown in my original post, and

b) that I do not find it “reliable” when tables or images are added, removed or shuffled. Especially in tables is the item number contained in the table itself, so number sequencing is not plain enough.

I'll go on talking to DTP tools, and see if there is something.

Thanks for the in-tools tip, I found two nice other utilities there :-)

Also thanks for the typefi tip, and that kind of structured single-sourcing is a wet dream in my happiest moments, but it won't fit in our corporate structure. The powers have chosen another approach and there is no centrally managed publishing department. We who are the most core group, have to find our most efficient way to do it, and in an unobtrusive way for those that might not know about GREP and other nice things.