Hi,
I've done some testing and read a few threads in this forum, but cannot find a solution. Let's assume I have three books. All books have just a single file, called Content.fm. I have inherited an environments with tons of (unstructured) FrameMaker projects like this. The Content.fm has many conditions. For each book, there is - of course - a specific selection of conditions.
Whenever I want to publish a book for customer 2, I have to look up the conditions to activate in a separate text file. This is very error prone, because I have to deactivate and activate the conditions again and again. As conditions cannot be stored in hierarchies, it's a nightmare to maintain this.
I'd like to store the conditions in the book file. The goal should be, that the content of the Content.fm is dynamically filtered depending on the conditional settings in the book. In DITA this would be no problem, for example by filtering specific content branches with a <ditavalref>.
But, how can I inherit conditions down from books to documents? Do I really have to manually ticking all these conditional check boxes? I cannot believe this is true.
"Whenever I want to publish a book for customer 2, I have to look up the conditions to activate in a separate text file."
I understand that this text file is just "documenting" the conditional tag combinations for each customer so that you can manually show/hide them for each customer book? That indeed sounds cumbersome and prone to errors.
I guess these documents were created in some quite old FrameMaker version, or your predecessor was not aware of "Conditional Expressions." Conditional Expressions provide exactly the functionality you are looking for.
Given a set of conditional tag (e.g., Feature1, Feature2, Feature3), you can definie Conditional Expressions like Customer1, Customer2, Customer3.
Then you can "assign" the conditional tags to the expressions, e.g.:
Customer1: "Feature-1"AND"Feature-2"
Customer2: "Feature-1"AND"Feature-3"
Customer3: "Feature-2"AND"Feature-3"
You can build all kinds of expressions with AND, OR, NOT, and build groups ()
Steps:
- Choose View > Show/Hide Conditional Tags
- In the Show/Hide Conditional Tags panel, click Build Expression to open the Manage Conditional Expression dialog.
- Type in an Expression Name (e.g., the customer name)
- Select the Condition Tags you want to include in the defition and combine them with AND/OR/NOT.
- Click Save.
- Back in the Show/Hide Conditional Tags panel, select "Show as per Expression" and select the Expression (e.g., "Customer2" for whom you want to publish.
I would create a new empty document as a conditional expression template for future use, define all condition tags once through (or import them from existing documents as described by Winfried), and then import it into all the Content.fm documents.
So, simply said, you just need to "translate" the conditional tag settings documented in the text file into conditional expressions in the new conditional expression template. It's a one time-effort. From then on, you can simply open your content.fm documents, select the customer name from the Expression drop down in the Show/Hide Conditional Tags panel, save, publish.
Hi,
I've done some testing and read a few threads in this forum, but cannot find a solution. Let's assume I have three books. All books have just a single file, called Content.fm. I have inherited an environments with tons of (unstructured) FrameMaker projects like this. The Content.fm has many conditions. For each book, there is - of course - a specific selection of conditions.
Whenever I want to publish a book for customer 2, I have to look up the conditions to activate in a separate text file. This is very error prone, because I have to deactivate and activate the conditions again and again. As conditions cannot be stored in hierarchies, it's a nightmare to maintain this.
I'd like to store the conditions in the book file. The goal should be, that the content of the Content.fm is dynamically filtered depending on the conditional settings in the book. In DITA this would be no problem, for example by filtering specific content branches with a <ditavalref>.
But, how can I inherit conditions down from books to documents? Do I really have to manually ticking all these conditional check boxes? I cannot believe this is true.
"Whenever I want to publish a book for customer 2, I have to look up the conditions to activate in a separate text file."
I understand that this text file is just "documenting" the conditional tag combinations for each customer so that you can manually show/hide them for each customer book? That indeed sounds cumbersome and prone to errors.
I guess these documents were created in some quite old FrameMaker version, or your predecessor was not aware of "Conditional Expressions." Conditional Expressions provide exactly the functionality you are looking for.
Given a set of conditional tag (e.g., Feature1, Feature2, Feature3), you can definie Conditional Expressions like Customer1, Customer2, Customer3.
Then you can "assign" the conditional tags to the expressions, e.g.:
Customer1: "Feature-1"AND"Feature-2"
Customer2: "Feature-1"AND"Feature-3"
Customer3: "Feature-2"AND"Feature-3"
You can build all kinds of expressions with AND, OR, NOT, and build groups ()
Steps:
- Choose View > Show/Hide Conditional Tags
- In the Show/Hide Conditional Tags panel, click Build Expression to open the Manage Conditional Expression dialog.
- Type in an Expression Name (e.g., the customer name)
- Select the Condition Tags you want to include in the defition and combine them with AND/OR/NOT.
- Click Save.
- Back in the Show/Hide Conditional Tags panel, select "Show as per Expression" and select the Expression (e.g., "Customer2" for whom you want to publish.
I would create a new empty document as a conditional expression template for future use, define all condition tags once through (or import them from existing documents as described by Winfried), and then import it into all the Content.fm documents.
So, simply said, you just need to "translate" the conditional tag settings documented in the text file into conditional expressions in the new conditional expression template. It's a one time-effort. From then on, you can simply open your content.fm documents, select the customer name from the Expression drop down in the Show/Hide Conditional Tags panel, save, publish.
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