Using conditions for "Either / Or"

Thanks again for the various comments. I've looked at the resources you suggest, but it all boils down to having two tags and then relying on the person creating the document to rememebr to include one and exclude the other, which is what I was hoping to avoid.

The problem is that we have quite a few either / or pairs. Our materials are international with some (slight) modifications for different countries / areas. (Usually US vs Everywhere else!) and I didn't want to risk anyone accidentally having either both sets of conditional text in, or neither.

Never mind, I'll just battle on with pairs of tags for now, I may look into Structured Framemaker at a leter date, or even see if I can't automate it to a point with the FDK.

If you think about it, a single condition tag would have to have the ability to be applied negatively. That is, in some instances you want the text to show when its condition is shown, and in others you would want the text to HIDE when its condition is SHOWN. Adding that ability is equivalent to having two conditions. Furthermore, having conditions with subconditions would probably make even the most experienced Frame user shriek into the night.

Can this be done or am I stuck with two tags?

Stuck with two tags. A single XOR tag might be handy, but having two is hardly much extra work. I'm doing several manuals with the XOR challenge right now (localization, not media content).

In the Book menu, select all the book component .fm files, then

View > Show / Hide Conditional Text

Swap two *-Only codes with the <--- --->

[Set]

Push

Caveat. The Push workflow order gets important when you have extensive CCs:

1. Book: View > Show / Hide
   (almost certain to cause repagination)
   
2. Book: View > Hide Condition Indicators
   (assuming your codes have text decoration)
3. Book: Format > Page Layout > Apply Master Pages*
   (assuming you aren't just Left/Right)
   
4. Book: Edit > Update Book*
5. Book: View > Color Views
   (assuming you have some author-only stuff to switch off)
6. Book: File: > Print

I have not looked into scripting the above.

Another tip: for your XOR content that is not normal text flow, you can apply a condition code just to the anchor glyph for anchored frames and tables. Avoid, however, having the XOR'd anchors on top of each other in the paragraph.

This can get messy when both conditions are "In", as  they commonly are for authoring, so it may be cleaner to have clone  paragraphs, or even entire pages of content, which can be switched on  and off.

________

* There's an AMP option in Update Book. It is seriously unreliable in FM71./Unix. So we AMP separately.

Thanks, both of you, for the very rapid response!

It looks like I'm going to be stuck with two tags since I'm not sure the rest of my department will want to go down the route of Structured FrameMaker..

If you were only going to exclude your animated graphic and not put something else in (the static graphics), you could get away with one PrintOnly or PDFOnly tag. Everything not marked with it would be included. But since in the PDF output you really want animation & no static graphics, and in the paper output you want no animation & yes to the static graphics, you'll be stuck with 2 tags.

Wierdbeard65 wrote: Hi, I'm (fairly) new to Frame (9) although not to computers and a myriad of applications! Anyway, I have a question about Conditional Text that I cannot find the answer to via forum, site or even Google searches. In the documentation, it gives the example of having a manual for two versions of a product, Unix and Windows. It suggests that you need two tags and would switch the appropriate tag on when you produce the printed manual. I would like to achieve this with a single condition. Is this possible? In other words, I'd like to be able to mark text as conditional when a particular condition tag is NOT selected. In this way, if I choose (using the example) Show Windows, I get the Windows comments (but not the Unix ones) and if I Hide Windows I get the Unix ones (but not the Windows ones). Rather than having to remember to show one and hide the other all the time. My situation is that I am trying to produce a manual for consumption both in paper form and via electronic PDF. I have some animations which I want to appear in the PDF but (obviously) not on paper. In the paper version, I want a series of static graphics and accompanying text. I will never want both in a single document, so would like a single conditional tag of "Print Only" that will switch between the two versions. Can this be done or am I stuck with two tags? TIA

Conditional text in "Standard" FrameMaker isn't smart enough to do this. However, Structured FrameMaker, when used with a Element Definition Document (aka EDD), a counterpart to a Document Type Definition (aka DTD) can do this, but it's not trivial to set it up. Structured FrameMaker has a built-in rules processor that works as you'd expect if you'd programmed in most computer languages.

Search Google for terms like "FrameMaker structured application, structured authoring, edd, dtd, getting started," "FrameMaker conditions based on attributes," "FrameMaker structured applications development guide," and "FrameMaker structure application developers guide," and similar phrases for lots of references.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

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Peter Gold

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