Conversion with Conditional Text in Table

[Guest]

I'm taking the first steps in converting Unstructured Frame to Structure. One document is pretty clean except for one issue: my structure breaks around conditional text in tables. (The tables have a f3ew issues oftheir own, but the conditional text seems to compound the problem) I'm not sure how this should be dealt with. The structure tags are shown in the view below.

And here is the Structure View:

Is this something that can be set up with a qualifier, and if so, How? Also, in the conversion map table, Is there any order dependency, as well, concerning where the Conditional Text element appears?

[Michael_Müller-Hillebrand]

Jane,

As far as I am concerned I do not see anything unexpected. You get dotted lines in the Structure View apparently because the element <B1_Body1> seems not to be allowed in the Element <CELL>. It looks like you worked with the defaults of the Conversion Table. Have you created your own EDD and imported the Element Definitions? Is <B1_Body1> a legal element inside <CELL>?

From my experience the Conditional Text feature works very much in parallel to the element structure. It comes from the format-based world and the structure has no means to handle text conditions. If you want to work with text conditions in the future, you would use »attribute-based condition management« as made possible through the plug-in AXCM or FrameMaker’s built-in feature »Filter by attribute«. There is no built-in method to change text conditions into certain attribute values – but it is possible to automate this move via the FDK or FrameScript or ExtendScript (from FM10).

- Michael

[Van Kurtz · Accepted solution]

Jane,

As Michael states, a conversion table does not convert conditions to structure. In a structured document, one applies, removes, shows, and hides conditions the same way as one does on an unstructured document. The only difference is that you can select whole elements and treat them with conditions.

In a sense, FrameMaker treats conditions as processing instructions. If you were to export a structured document as XML and view it with a browser or text editor, you would find processing instructions that mark the conditional text ranges.

So, again as Michael says, the conditional text is not breaking your structure. It is overlaid over the structure.

Van

[Russ Ward]

Jane, I'll add these two cents... You should make sure that all conditions are shown before running the conversion table. The conversion process will simply ignore any hidden text, which may cause any nature of structural melee once you unhide it.

Russ

[Guest]

Thanks. I didn't have any conditional text in documents I've worked with trying to put into structure, before, and knowing how it handles it has been very helpful.