Setting change bars via a condition in a document containing conditionalised table rows (FM2019)
Hello. I use FM2019 to maintain books comprising documents which contain several different conditions for customer-specific output variants. My deliverables are PDF.
These documents include tables. Within a table it is common for one or more specific rows to be entirely conditionalized (at table row level, not cell content level) for one or more customers. When Show Condition Indicators is checked, conditionalized table row cell borders are cross-hatched, as expected.
Prior to PDF creation I set the appropriate Show/Hide Condition Text settings to show only the material for the appropriate customer, and uncheck the Show Condition Indicators box. For tables, the cross-hatching is now hidden.
To indicate document content changes in the PDF, I have previously applied change bars manually (Format->Style->Change Bar) and then post-publication I’ve cleared them all en masse, starting the next iteration of the document with a clean slate. However, for various reasons I am now considering applying them via a condition instead (there are potential use cases for using find/change to locate and then clear certain change bars selectively while retaining others).
From my experimentation so far, the stumbling point comes with conditionalized table rows.
If I create a condition tag with Style set to Change Bar then the change bar itself is a condition indicator. So I do not expect it to show if the Show Condition Indicators box is unchecked. But the Show Condition Indicators box has to be unchecked to prevent cross-hatching showing in the conditionalized table cell borders.
Does this mean that it is impossible to use a condition to manage change bars (that must be visible in the output) in a document which also contains conditionalized table rows (whose cross-hatching must not be visible in the output)?
(Caveat – there were some odd things going on with viewing, saving and closing – initially it looked, counterintuitively, as if unchecking Show Condition Indicators and then selecting Apply would retain the change bar in the view while hiding the cross-hatching, but this was just in that initial view. If the document is then saved and reopened (with Show Condition Indicators still unchecked), the change bars do not show (as one would expect)).
