EDD context rules for any ancestors with certain attribute

Simon,

    I'm glad you have found a context rule that works, but I would still like to understand why your second attempt did not. In summary, you have tried:

1. * [change = ”yes”]

2.  * < (chapter | codechapter | codechapterdivision | codechaptersubdivision | part | division | subdivision | clause | subclause | schedule | subschedule) [change = ”yes”]

3. * < (chapter | clause)[change = ”yes”]

4. * < (chapter[change = ”yes”] | codechapter[change = ”yes”] | codechapterdivision[change = ”yes”] | codechaptersubdivision[change = ”yes”] | part[change = ”yes”] | division[change = ”yes”] | subdivision[change = ”yes”] | clause[change = ”yes”] | subclause[change = ”yes”] | schedule[change = ”yes”] | subschedule[change = ”yes”])

Specification 1. is the most compact and I agree that it should work. I do not understand why 3. works (even if does not test all the contexts you want) but 2. does not. And 4. is a large amount of testing.

You have not mentioned what element you are formatting with these rules. Do you reuse this format rule in the definitions of multiple element types? If so, I recommend putting the long specification in a variable so that you can reuse it multiple times with no risk of a typo in any of the copies.

I'm also surprised that you are setting the color for a text range. In general, documents have three classes of element, although nesting can, of course, go much deeper:

1. What we might call organizational elements, such as all those you have listed in your context specification: parts, chapters, sections, and so forth. Of course, such elements can be nested.

2. Paragraph-level elements, which includes elements called paragraph (or para or p) and other elements that can occur as siblings or alternatives of paragraphs. For the sake of this discussion, I consider title, head, heading and their abbreviations to be paragraph-level elements as I do elements such as list, which require subelements such as item which are also at the paragraph level.

3. Inline elements such as phrase, name, citedtitle, partnumber.

I'm introducing this terminology just to point out that typically organizational elements and paragraph-level elements are formatted as FrameMaker paragraphs. Text ranges are parts of paragraphs. From the elements and attribute you've shown in your context specifications, it seems that you indicate when an organizational element has changed, but are changing text ranges within it.

It is also possible that your attempt 2. did work, but it's affect was undone by other format rules applied to nested elements. The Show Element Context command can help identify such situations. If the formatting specified for a nested element cancels the affect of the formatting of a containing element, though, switching from rule 2. to 4. shouldn't solve the problem.

As I mentioned in a private message, is there any chance of you sending me a sample document that illustrates some of these issues? It need no contain any proprietary text, of course.

--Lynne