3 targets with conflicting condition tags - help?

[Eric Lachance]

Hi!

I am currently creating 3 outputs from a single project in Flare:
- One "Getting Started" guide with limited information on installation and activation of our product
- One "User Guide" PDF with all the information necessary to use the software (on top of what the Getting Started has)
- One "WebHelp" which is almost the same as the PDF, but will be used for calling HelpIDs from the software directly to the online documentation.

The issue I'm having is that I've created conditions for two output types (Web and PDF) as well as the two different guides (User and Getting Started).

I'm trying to display a little "note" that changes depending on what output the client is viewing. That is:

- The PDF version says "This PDF was generated on XX/XX/XXXX for version X.X of the software. For the current documentation go online at LINK"
- The Online doc says "This documentation was generated on XX/XX/XXXX for version X.X of the software. You can download a PDF version here: LINK"
- The Getting Started says "This Getting Started Guide is limited to installation and activation. For the full user guide go online at LINK"

The conditions on those 3 blocks are as such:
- PDF Version: "User Guide", PDF
- WebHelp: "User Guide", Web
- Getting Started: "Getting Started" (no output type)

The target's conditions are set as:
- PDF User guide: Exclude: "Getting Started", "Web". Include: "User Guide", "PDF"
- WebHelp: "Getting Started", "PDF". Include: "User Guide", "Web"
- Getting Started: Include: Getting Started. Exclude: All others.

The Problem:
- The Getting Started guide is fine because it ignores all but the "getting started" block correctly.
- The PDF Version is fine, it only contains the PDF User Guide section.
- The WebHelp version, however, contains both the Web Help block, as well as the Getting Started guide.

I'm assuming it somewhat has to do with the conditions having some priority over include/exclude (if you have both, what wins?) but I don't understand why one would work, and the exact reverse wouldn't. Does it depend on alphabetical order (I hope not!!!)? Is it something else I'm missing, a technique?

[Eric Lachance]

I also tried creating a snippet with with only the "User Guide" sections and having each of the two sections have conditions (one Web, one PDF). That did not work, possibly conditions in snippets are ignored... or conditions on snippets that have a condition are ignored.

[RamonS]

One thing to keep in mind is that, by default and for good reason, Flare always includes everything that is not explicitly excluded. In case of conflict the include wins. My guess is that somewhere you have either an include defined for the parts you do not want or you did not explicitly exclude them. Conditions and tagging can get confusing very fast.

[Eric Lachance]

I don't know if it's really a confusion on my part or Flare's.

The thing is there are 2 sets of conditions and 2 sets of tags - and as far as I can tell from the documentation, there is no clear rule on what takes priority and when.

There are definitely tags on the objects I'm trying to put conditions on, and I have what seems (in my logic) to be what should be. But it's not doing the output I'm expecting.

[LTinker68]

The thing is there are 2 sets of conditions and 2 sets of tags

I think you mean there are four conditions -- "User Guide", "Getting Started", "PDF", and "Web". To use one of your examples, for the PDF target, you explicitly include the User Guide and PDF, which overrides the explicit exclude of Getting Started and Web. Additionally, if you have content that you haven't marked with any condition tags, then it's implicitly included.

If you have content that's marked with both the Getting Started and User Guide conditions, then it'll be included in the WebHelp output because you have the User Guide explicitly set to be included.

[RamonS]

I don't know if it's really a confusion on my part or Flare's.

The thing is there are 2 sets of conditions and 2 sets of tags - and as far as I can tell from the documentation, there is no clear rule on what takes priority and when.

That's the reason why I told you. From posts before it usually turns out that somewhere some combination caused that an include overrides an exclude and you get things included although you excluded them. I'm telling you, it is confusing. In all cases that I can recall in the end Flare did exactly what the user told it to do.

[Eric Lachance]

So what I get from what both of you are telling me, if there is both an include and an exclude on a variable it gets included. I get that.

I guess at this point I need to look at my logic, find out if there's anything I can do to fix it, and make a feature request to have more fine-grained control over includes/excludes (perhaps having a "Force Exclude", meaning it would override any includes).

This is going to make single sourcing a 4-output project a nightmare.

[RamonS]

The problem is that Flare needs to have a reasonable default behavior when it encounters conflicts or no conditions at all. It makes sense to have this be the same behavior in either case. When you create a project and do not apply any conditions the default behavior is to include everything. The same default behavior is applied when conflicts occur. I think that is a reasonable approach to these problems and those issues won't go away no matter how fine grained the control is. In fact, with snippets and conditions you could condition content down to a single character. Doesn't get any finer than that.

[Eric Lachance]

I understand why there needs to be a default behaviour, and I agree on that. Especially the "include whatever doesn't have a condition tag on it" - it would be excruciating otherwise, having to put tags on everything.

However I do hope that there can be a way to specify forced exclusions. From my background in tech support and network administrator, I can tell you that permissions (which these are almost) will generally have the contrary behaviour - "deny" will always take precedence on "allow". In a sense, this is what I wish would happen here.

[KGaetz]

When I'm working with multiple targets, I use snippets for the bulk of my topics. I set all the conditions I'll need in the snippet.

To re-use the text, I make individual topics that basically just have the header and maybe an introductory paragraph. Then I insert the snippet. I can set conditions for a topic at either the topic level or the snippet level, but I usually just use the snippet conditions. (Right-click on an open topic. The properties page has two tabs: conditional text and snippet conditions.)

Using the same snippet in multiple topics works well and I only have to set the "include" condition tag.

[RamonS]

I understand why there needs to be a default behaviour, and I agree on that. Especially the "include whatever doesn't have a condition tag on it" - it would be excruciating otherwise, having to put tags on everything.

However I do hope that there can be a way to specify forced exclusions. From my background in tech support and network administrator, I can tell you that permissions (which these are almost) will generally have the contrary behaviour - "deny" will always take precedence on "allow". In a sense, this is what I wish would happen here.

But then you would need to explicitly include everything even for a project that does not make use of any conditions otherwise because the default behavior is to exclude. The only alternative is to have different default behaviors depending on conditions applied or not. I doubt that makes it easier.
I understand what you are saying and I agree that such behavior will make your current situation easier, but in the end you cannot eat your cake and have it, too.

You may want to look at options where you do not put explicit include conditions on anything and only exclude what you do not need. The include will happen automatically.

[Eric Lachance]

It seems everyone is thinking that I'm putting tags on things that should be in all outputs - it's not the case.

Let me restate the original issue:

• I have 3 paragraphs (3 blocks).
• Each one should appear in only one output.
• 2 of these output targets are a full user guide, one PDF, one WebHelp.
• The other is a PDF but it's a "getting started" guide
• I'm having issues with determining how to create conditions that will still work for the rest of the topic, while having those 3 paragraphs output in the correct target. That is, I don't want to create a "User Guide PDF", a "User Guide WebHelp" and a "Getting Started PDF" just for these 3 paragraphs.

[KGaetz]

Where do these blocks appear? At the bottom of each page or one time only at the beginning of the document/help?

[Eric Lachance]

Where do these blocks appear? At the bottom of each page or one time only at the beginning of the document/help?

The 3 blocks are at the top of the page, just under the header. Here's what it looks like in the editor, along with the condition tags:


Here are the tags for the target output:

[Eric Lachance]

Erm....

Wait, what? I just tried that again by checking "exclude" on the getting started, for the PDF and Web outputs... And it works.

I did modifications before now, so... maybe I tried to do something too fancy and now this is working fine.

Hmmm.