Conditional Text formats table

[bowen192]

Hello ,

W7, FM11, TCS4.

I am applying conditional text to a 100 page manual I have set up.  I have made about eight Condition Tags.

When I apply one condition to a table, it changes from this:

to this:

At first I thought it was leftover selection that would disappear after I scrolled the page up and down, but it appears not.

No changes have been made in the Table Designer or Custom Ruling and Shading.

Any ideas?

[Bob_Niland]

What's the problem?

When you apply a CC to a table row, the appearance of the cell borders is modified to more or less evoke the text decoration (Indicators) specified for that CC. If you unShow that CC, those rows will collapse, along with the Indicators.

The CC is applied to the cells, and not the cell text. You might expect the CC to be applied to the cell text, but that is not done, because applying a CC to the cell text is left to you. The cell, and the text, can have different CCs.

[bowen192]

Error7103 wrote:

What's the problem?

"When you apply a CC to a table row, the appearance of the cell borders is modified to more or less evoke the text decoration (Indicators) specified for that CC. If you unShow that CC, those rows will collapse, along with the Indicators."

That's exactly what happens!

"The CC is applied to the cells, and not the cell text. You might expect the CC to be applied to the cell text, but that is not done, because applying a CC to the cell text is left to you. The cell, and the text, can have different CCs."

Makes sense.

That all makes sense to me.  The only thing I'm uncertain about now is that it seems to be only one condition tag that follows this rule.

[bowen192]

Also, how am I to apply Conditional Test to a table?

[ksoltys]

bowen192 wrote:

Also, how am I to apply Conditional Test to a table?

Select the table anchor (which will select the table) and apply the condition.

Regards

Keith

[bowen192]

ksoltys wrote:

bowen192 wrote:

Also, how am I to apply Conditional Text to a table?

Select the table anchor (which will select the table) and apply the condition.

Regards

Keith

So it's not possible to apply the condition to part of a table?

[Bob_Niland · Accepted solution]

> So it's not possible to apply the condition to part of a table?

It is, but only to entire rows, or to cell content (not the cell itself). You can't do entire columns, or parts of columns. You can't do parts of rows (as cell groups).

You can apply a CC to an entire table by tagging just the anchor.

You can apply a CC to entire rows (they don't need to be contiguous).

You can apply a CC to arbitrary content of arbitrary cells, just as in Flow A text. The cells will show up empty with the CC off (unless the entire row is CC'd off).

You can apply multiple CCs to the same content as above, with the normal pre-FM9 IOR rule, or the FM9+ expressions. As always, avoid overlapping CCs.

Of course, all of this presumes that Table CC works, without crashing, in your version of FM.

[bowen192]

Error7103 wrote:

> So it's not possible to apply the condition to part of a table?

It is, but only to entire rows, or to cell content (not the cell itself). You can't do entire columns, or parts of columns. You can't do parts of rows (as cell groups).

You can apply a CC to an entire table by tagging just the anchor.

You can apply a CC to entire rows (they don't need to be contiguous).

You can apply a CC to arbitrary content of arbitrary cells, just as in Flow A text. The cells will show up empty with the CC off (unless the entire row is CC'd off).

You can apply multiple CCs to the same content as above, with the normal pre-FM9 IOR rule, or the FM9+ expressions. As always, avoid overlapping CCs.

Of course, all of this presumes that Table CC works, without crashing, in your version of FM.

Thanks for spelling it out to a thicky, mate.

A pleasure as always.

[Bob_Niland]

> Thanks for spelling it out to a thicky, mate.

If FM11 had a manual, and the manual had pretensions of being minimally comprehensive and adequately indexed, you would have found it.

The FM9 User Guide says, if you can find it: "table rows can be conditional". Under "Apply and remove condition tags" it has a few more clues. This content is similar to that in FM7, but the FM7 manual points to these in the Index. The FM9 index is emaciated. It's an FM8 document. What clown blew away the Index tags that were obviously there? I suspect the alleged documentation for FM10 and 11 is little improved.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I've added it as a suggestion to that help topic you mention in the FM11 community help.

[Bob_Niland]

> ... community help.

Translation: if you want to find the FM9, 10 and 11 documentation,

well, you're reading it right now.

All of which is consistent with an apparent Adobe strategy to sell

this product (FM) only to those who already know how to use it ...

... which makes one wonder why they are adding new capabilities

that would appeal to entirely new customer categories.