Text Inset in Container File Loses Conditional Tag

[docbuilder]

Hi,

(Framemaker 8.0p277,unstructured)

I have a number of books that make use of text inset and conditional text.  Some text insets contain conditional text in their source. Then, after the inset is put into the container file, the inset may be further conditionalized. This illustrates the situation:

--- Text Inset ---

This inset was created for end users.

When using function X, blah blah blah

-----End Inset----

The red text indicates an InternalDocComment condition. This inset is then placed into the container file where it has another condition applied, PrintOnly for example. PrintOnly is in blue.

The writer is able to set all this up fine. After placing the inset into the container, she selects the inset and applies PrintOnly.  The text inset appears in blue and the InternalDocComment as visible shows the maroon of two mixed colors. The writer saves the file, continues working on the files, then later in the week, the writer opens the container file. The blue color indicator is gone from the inset. When the writer selects the inset and chooses Apply Conditional Text, the Conditional Text dialog shows the current selection is Conditional (radio button) but no tags appear in the In portion of the dialog.

I've tried using spacer paragraphs in and around the text inset to see if we can get the conditional tag to "stick" but nothing is working.

Has anyone run into this before?

TIA,

Mary

[Arnis Gubins]

Mary,

Is the entire inset container paragraph conditionalized or just the inset (anchor)?

[docbuilder]

Arnis,

The entire paragraph is conditionalized. I even tried a configuraiton like this:

___P  <-- spacer paragraph

___<inset>___P  <--  paragraph with inset

___P  <-- spacer paragraph

Where all of these paragraphs were conditionalized...the one before, the containing, and the one after the inset.The tag kept getting lost.

Mary

[Arnis Gubins]

Is the text inset imported setting all characteristics to the document that you are importing into or leaving it "as is"? If you are setting to the current document, does that have the same condition indicators and are they also set as per the inset?

I suspect something funky is happening when the inset gets updated depending upon your preferences for the updates. If the container doc doesn't have all of the same conditions that the inset doc has, FM might be getting cranky. I haven't tried this out, but it's one avenue to explore.

[docbuilder]

Arnis,

Good thought. I've already checked this...still I checked again. Both documents have the same set of conditional text. The inset is allowing the container file formats to rule which is the default.

Mary

[Van Kurtz]

I use a lot of conditional text and insets but within a structured document. I have noticed that FrameMaker does not always do what one thinks it does. For example, copy a piece of unconditional text and paste it in the middle of conditional text and the pasted text remains unconditional. Each time you open the document, FrameMaker updates the text insets. In your case, it is updating a text inset that is on the whole unconditional. So, my guess is that it bringing it in as unconditional, much like the copy and paste example above. You might test this by creating a small document with the inset and over conditioning, saving it in the mif format, opening the mif file, and looking at how the conditioning is applied. Then save the Frame file, open it, save as mif, and repeat the above. If the containing file conditions DO hold up, then try removing the conditioning within the containing file and reapplying it; this may help to clear out some bad conditioning.

I vaguely recall trying to conditionalize a text inset within the containing document and had problems. I cannot remember what exactly the problems were. My solution was to do the conditioning within the inset file itself. So, if the text inset is always to be conditionalized in the containing document, then do the conditioning within the document itself.