Maximum Number of Conditional Tags?

[Paul320950331n3y]

Maximum Number of Conditional Tags?

  I have a document that has standard content and 65 customers who have custom alterations to that standard content. Does Framemaker have the capability of handling large numbers of Conditional text tags for at least 65 customers and a color for each of them?

Thank you!

[frameexpert]

65 condition formats shouldn't be a problem. There are only a handful of colors built into FrameMaker so you may have to create some custom colors if you want each condition format to have a different color.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Never heard of a FM limit on conditions, but 65 would waaay exceed my mental limits on managing that!

[Bob_Niland]

Klaus doesn't have a max listed on his Known limits and special properties page.

One practical limit might be the vertical size of the selection menu, and how it behaves when there's more than a vertical screenful.

[Winfried Reng]

You can extend the size of the dialog to show and hide conditions. Therefore 65 can be handled.

You can set not only the color, but also other properties like underline, overline, strike, background, etc. But it's definitely difficult to differentiate and remember 65 conditions.

[Bob_Niland]

If the Conditions are exclusive (only one on at a time), and just denote client-specific content and document ID, surfing the list is not a problem per se.

What do become problems are:

• not stomping on all the other existing conditionalized text when adding/editing. You probably have to turn all the Conditions on to see the entire minefield,
• shared conditions, where the same text applies to more than one client, but not to all.

I've done this sort of work for simpler cases, such as for domestic|export and brandingA|brandingB of the same product, and I'm not really sure it economizes effort. It does complicate documenting steps for output workflow. For 65 variants, I'd be pondering othering possible approaches, particularly if any of them want different page layouts, typography, numbering, etc.

Translations are straight out.

[Winfried Reng]

And: apply conditions only to entire paragraphs (or maybe parts of numbers). Otherwise you will definitely get problems when such text gets translated!

[Paul320950331n3y]

Greetings All!

  It seems that others have experienced problem solving similar to this project. However, navigating the conditional text editor will become cumbersome to say the least, maintenance will be fun. Thus, I too have thought about, “What are other methods to handle this much customized content for 65 customers using Framemaker, or another application? How does one avoid a gigantic file size and mega pages long?” I appreciate all of you sharing your suggestions, thank you!

[Bob_Niland]

re: …this much customized content for 65 customers…

What needs to be different?
- page layouts?
- typography (fonts, styles)?
- header/footer content?
- pages and.or section numbering?
- part numbers?
- great swaths of text?
- entity IDs in text?
- does language arise as an issue?
Some of these could be handled by Variables & formats imported from per-client templates.
Some could be handled by per-client Text Insets.
Or it might be necessary to invert the whole Text Inset model, and have separate documents for each client, that import the shared content from a common all-client document.

Some entities choose to address this by keep all the bits in a database, and generating per-client MIFs on the fly.

[frameexpert]

If you want to create a spreadsheet of Condition Format names, color names, and CMYK values, I will post a free script that will create all of the formats for you.