combining conditional tags problem

This forum is for Single-Sourcing your Flare content to multiple outputs.
Post Reply
helper
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Feb 20, 2008 3:52 am

combining conditional tags problem

Post by helper »

Hi
I encountered the following problem with conditional tags:

Besides the usual conditions ScreenOnly and PrintOnly I have two additional conditions, say ProOnly and StudioOnly which I use to tag texts etc. that should show up only in the regarding Help and Printed manual of two versions of a software documentation, Pro and Studio.

So I have 4 targets, helpStudio, helpPro, PrintStudio and PrintPro. In the target conditions of these I combine the conditions in a way that, for instance Studio Help is set to: include ScreenOnly, include StudioOnly, exclude PrintOnly, exclude ProOnly. So far so good, but there are cases when I tag content with StudioOnly *and* ScreenOnly. For instance: Often there are linked headings below the introductory text of a chapter linking directly to a topic in the chapter. Those headings are tagged with ScreenOnly. And there are features that shouldn't be included in the Studio version so the according headlines are additionally tagged with ProOnly.

Now the problem: when I produce a printed manual version of the Pro version, these linked headlines show up in the print manual! The "exclude ScreenOnly" condition is overridden by the "include ProOnly" condition. I experimented with the advanced tag settings but I couldn't manage a formula that leads to the desired output. The only solution I came up at the moment is to define a special condition (ScreenandProOnly) but every fundamental change in these conditions result in lots of updates in otherwisely unchanged files that show up in the next localization round.

the advanced conditions string for the described case is

Primary.ProOnly or Primary.PrintOnly or not (Primary.ScreenOnly or Primary.StudioOnly )

How should I change this to get the right output without introducing new condition tags? (I suspect the OR conjunctions are the problem here, but I have no clue).

Thanks in advance
helper
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Feb 20, 2008 3:52 am

Re: combining conditional tags problem

Post by helper »

I somewhat simplified the problem and for this special case with 2 program versions and 2 outputs there is a simple solution: don't tick the ProOnly Tag at all so it cannot override the exlude screenOnly condition
Primary.PrintOnly or not (Primary.ScreenOnly or Primary.StudioOnly ) because if a tag is neither included nor excluded the content is included anyway. But in reality I have more than 2 versions and also a general "hidden" tag for content that is outdated but will come back in later versions. So a general explanation of the use of this would be appreciated. The help file on using conditions is long but not very revealing.
NorthEast
Master Propellus Maximus
Posts: 6359
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 8:33 am

Re: combining conditional tags problem

Post by NorthEast »

The condition should only be set to Include if you specifically want it to override a condition set to Exclude, when both conditions are set on the same tag/item.

So in many cases, you probably don't need to set the Include at all - the content will automatically be "included" in your output unless there is another condition on it set to Exclude.

When you set up conditions in a project, it's best to base them on what content you plan to exclude, rather than what to include.
SteveS
Senior Propellus Maximus
Posts: 2087
Joined: Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:06 pm
Location: Adelaide, far side of the world ( 34°56'0.78\"S 138°46'44.28\"E).
Contact:

Re: combining conditional tags problem

Post by SteveS »

Dave's right.

All content is implicitly included in Flare output. If the explicitly include it will overide any exclude conditional tags.

It is worth noting you can apply a condition to a folder, and the condition cascades down through the folder content. If you have print only topics you can place them in a folder with the appropriate print only condition to prevent them being included in online targets. People find this when they conduct a search and they find topics in their online output that they did not include in the TOC.
Image
Steve
Life's too short for bad coffee, bad chocolate, and bad red wine.
helper
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Feb 20, 2008 3:52 am

Re: combining conditional tags problem

Post by helper »

Thank you, Steve and Dave, for the clarification :)
Post Reply