strategies for conditional content
DESCRIPTION
Comparison of the different ways you can specify conditional content in both regular and structured FrameMaker 8.TRANSCRIPT
Strategies for Conditional Text in FrameMaker 8
Terry SmithDITA/TECHCOMM
November 2008
About the presenter
Technical Consultant, Scriptorium Publishing, based in Research Triangle Park, NCFrameMaker ACEAuthored updates to Publishing Fundamentals: FrameMaker 8
Agenda
Purpose of conditional contentMarking text as conditionalOptions for processing conditional content in unstructured FrameMakerAttribute filtering in structured FrameMaker
Determine the conditional text “dimensions” you need
Which content can be conditional?
Marking conditional content in regular FrameMaker
Choice 1: Never allow condition tags to overlapChoice 2: Always (or just sometimes) allow overlapping condition tags
Regular FrameMaker
Show/Hide conditions: Each condition is either showing or hidden (despite misleading Conditional Text dialog box that implies other options).Conditional expressions: These let you combine conditional operators (those used in Boolean expressions) for more flexibility.
Traditional conditional text: applying one tag only
Good: Easy to see which condition tags are applied.Bad: May need lots of condition tags.
One tag only: up to 32 condition tags needed
Traditional conditional text: layering every condition tag that applies
Good: May need (somewhat) fewer tags.Bad: Difficult to manage the tags.
Layering condition tags: only 18 tags (not 32)
Layered tags hard to manage
Demo of Show/Hide conditions
Applying conditionsShow/HideShowing condition indicators
Conditional expressions require minimum number of condition tags
Conditional Expressions
Mix of condition tags (some layered, some not) = Challenging conditional expressionsConsistently layered tagging = easy conditional expressions
Demo of conditional expressions
Building an expressionShowing “as per expression”
Condition tags retained in XML, but not part of structure
Structured FrameMaker
Attributes and filtering available for structured FrameMaker only.Filter which conditional content shows in output based on attributes. Filtering is at the element level.
Marking conditional content in structured FrameMaker
Specify only one value for a single attribute.You can specify values for multiple attributes.
Attribute filtering goes beyond conditional text functionality
Can filter on multiple attributes.Product = “Pro” AND Output = “Print” AND Platform = “UNIX”Conditional tags are always combined as OR.Excellent approach for content with numerous conditions.
Downside: Visual indicators not available
You Cannot use colors to indicate attribute filtering unless you add on to FrameMaker:
ABCMSourcererCustom FDK clientFrameScript
Structured FrameMaker setup
Your document's structure must allow some attributes you can use for your conditional content.
Add attributes for filtering to EDD
Add attributes to all elements you may want to make conditional.For XML, you need to change the files that make up the structured application to process any attributes you add. No additional changes needed for print and PDF (Save As PDF).
Marking structured content as conditional
Specify one value for attribute.Structure may allow multiple values for a single attribute, but filter by attribute doesn’t process multiple values on a single attribute.You can specify both condition tags and attributes, but you can only use one to set which conditions show in FrameMaker.
Demo of filter by attribute
Specify attribute values.Build filter.Apply filter.Validate for each attribute filter.
